Many organizations focus on the concept of ‘readiness’ as a key driver of success. For the Division of IT, being ready to understand and to meet Virginia Tech’s needs – including both supporting existing needs and positioning the university for innovation - is going to be of renewed importance over the coming years.

This work began in earnest in 2022 with the IT Transformation program, which began to lay the groundwork for a structure for IT governance, among other priorities. With the arrival of Sharon P. Pitt, our new vice president for information technology and CIO, this work will accelerate, involving more employees within the division, strengthening our partnerships across Virginia Tech, and enabling forward progress on some of IT’s most pressing challenges.

But what is readiness?

The U.S. Army defines the four pillars of readiness as ‘manning, training, equipping, and leader development.’ In international diplomacy, readiness is defined as achieving the conditions that have the potential to bring parties into a negotiation and encourage productive collaboration and cooperation during that negotiation – this is what enables all parties to reach agreement on a path forward.

In the project to modernize the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) toolset, as an example, readiness is defined as a state of preparedness achieved through a thorough planning process that takes into account the adequacy of funding, available expertise and personnel resources, organizational alignment, governance, and technical frameworks.

The scope of work that will go into the ERP modernization effort is expansive and will require sustained effort and investment over several years from team members in the Provost’s and Chief Operating Officer’s areas, including business and financial experts, human resources professionals, communication personnel, change managers and project managers, as well as many technical team members. The ERP roadmap will provide a structured approach to achieving readiness across each area, and that will help to ensure that our results align in the best way possible to meet the current and future needs of the university.

An old idea approached in a new way

Of course, IT readiness is not a new idea – but today it is being implemented in a new way, dovetailing with some organizational changes that will create a new team within the Division of IT.

The new IT Governance, Planning, and Strategy team will bring together many of the people who have already been shaping the university’s IT strategy, policy, project management, and business relationship management efforts. It will also depend on people in two new roles: an enterprise architect (to ensure that IT strategy and business goals align), and an Associate VP for IT Governance, Planning, and Strategy, to lead the team and coordinate relationships and efforts across IT units and university leadership. This team will ensure that we are enabling robust IT business analysis, enterprise architecture, planning, project management, and strategic investment functions for the university. This team will also ensure that we continue to establish an IT governance structure that promotes transparency and shared decision-making regarding technology investments and decisions.

Establishing this new team and meshing their work with the ongoing work of the IT community and the university will take some time, but the results will center the concept of readiness in all our technology and service planning, implementation, and management processes.

The goal we are moving towards is to empower people at all levels of the university community with the tools and support necessary to thrive.