UC IT Project Managers Meet for the First Time

By Dede Bruno. IT project managers from across UC came together for the first time on May 17, 2018, at UC Berkeley to attend the IT Project Management Symposium: Building Bridges and Cultivating Change. Coordination of the symposium was led by a small cross-location team: Halina Wojnicz and Yvonne Tevis at UCOP, Jon Conhaim at UC Berkeley, and Katie Mankins at UC Santa Barbara.

A driver for the symposium was to review and answer questions about the new Regents Reporting Policy and IT Project Management Guidelines. These procedures were developed to respond to the California state audit and to keep the Regents apprised of progress and costs related to significant IT projects across UC.

But the real motivation for the symposium was to create an occasion for IT project managers to meet peers from other locations and begin forming a systemwide community. In addition to reviewing the guidelines, attendees got insight into change management, attended a keynote on positive thinking by Jeremy Smith from the Greater Good Science Center, and toured the campus.

By the end of the day, we were all energized about building our UC peer network and sustaining a collaborative environment where we can share best practices and collateral; leverage tools, ideas, and templates; and exchange insight on vendors and lessons learned.

Our next opportunity to connect in-person will be in a Birds of a Feather session at the UCCSC 2018 at UC Davis. We have reserved the Academic Surge room on Monday, August 13, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.

In the meantime, everyone is welcome to join our project management channel in the UC Tech Slack team. Once you sign up for UC Tech Slack, join the #project-management channel.

We are looking forward to building and growing the IT project management community!

Dede Bruno is an IT project manager, UCOP Operations.