Strategic development in a local HEI context

Strategicinnovation in alocal contextPaul Walkp.walk@ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN is supported by: www.ukoln.ac.uk A centre of expertise in digital information management

nearly the end of the workshopfor this year, and you must be a little tired.... 2

content• local innovation in a recession• DevCSI and the developer community• the strategic developer• web-managers and local developers working together 3

technicalinnovation 4

is local IT expertise a sunk cost or an investment? 5

cost or investment?• IT often regarded as a sunk cost in HEIs....• ...but a capacity for technical innovation is a strategic resource which needs investment • in the institution • in the sector• maintaining the capacity for technical innovation is, itself, an investment• outsourcing IT has a cost • reduced capacity to innovate 6

what do the following havein common?• Colgate 1806• Lilly 1876 (invented concept of prescription drugs)• General Electric 1892• Hershey’s 1894• Microsoft 1975• 3M 1902• Black and Decker 1910 7

“successful companiesinnovate in a down market” 8

“Established companies sometimes perceive disruptiveinnovation to be risky. But success is possible. In fact, the greater risk comes from assuming that business as usual will allow companies to achieve their strategic aims....” Scott Anthony, Can Established Companies Disrupt? http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2008/12/can_established_companies_disr.html 9

innovation happens in a local context 10

how established orgs innovate• “Put the customer, and their important, unsatisﬁed job-to- be-done at the centre of the innovation equation” • local context, customer facing• “Embrace simplicity, convenience, and affordability” • local context, convenience• “Create organisational space for disruptive growth” • invest locally in capacity to innovate• “Consider innovation levers beyond features & functions”• “Become world class at testing, iterating & adjusting” • local integration, tweaking SaaS, rapid innovation Scott Anthony, Can Established Companies Disrupt? http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2008/12/can_established_companies_disr.html 11

is this possible without a local capacity to do technical innovation? given limited resources, how do we make the most of whatlocal technical expertise we do have? 12

DevCSI• building capacity among HE developers• cost-effective training• community-based peer support• raising the proﬁle of developers within H/FEIs• showcasing the technical innovation of HE developers• dev8D - like IWMW for developers :-) 14

stakeholder survey• 495 respondents including developers, their managers, IT directors, vendors, funders, users (academics, librarians, researchers) • 75%+ agreement that local developers understand the local context and act as a bridge between remote service providers, open source communities, and local end users, and add value by integrating into local contexts • 75% agreement that local developers work closely with end users to deliver innovation (more work needed though) • 70% agreement that local developers are undervalued as evidenced by short term contracts, lack of professional development or career opportunities and poor management 15

barn-raising 16

events!developing for the developing phone based mobile web applications workﬂow tools reading list hackday Open Repositories developer challenges pair programming agile prototyping dev8D techniques OER hackday engaging developers with open source software eBook/ePub Hackday 17

building stuff together• building stuff as free-form R&D• doing so in a very open environment• contributing ideas 18

building capacity 19

the manager’s view• "They gained a huge amount. They came back very enthusiastic and full of good ideas. It did a great deal for morale and motivation…. Its a very powerful thing when your peers say that you are doing something the best,"• “...decided to use the momentum of Dev8D to move forward with agile working and the List8D project by providing the development team with two very important assets: physical and mental space.” 20

the power of networks• peer-peer training (£85K at one 2 day event!)• collaborative development• pooling of expertise• knowledge-transfer to non- developers (librarians, web managers, researchers) 21

value for money!• having local/ institutional developer resource available is valuable• that local resource, while limited, can be backed-up by a community of peers• a well connected community of developers is greater than the sum of its parts!• developers can empower users 22

responsive innovation• agile & embedded • frequent F2F between developers & users - ﬁnely tuned & tailored solutions• responsive - perpetual beta • small, responsive incremental changes are possible • “if you want to keep incrementally improving the user experience then you need to retain a local capacity to do this”• gluing - the day job! (AKA enterprise integration) • from gluing locally installed vendor software to gluing SaaS • bespoke interfaces on common platforms• innovation happens in a local context 23

strategicdeveloper 24

case of the missing career pathHigher Education Institution ? Postgrad researcher/developer Academic Undergraduate Employed developer Manager ? 1 2 3 4 5}}} Spontaneous technical could happen here Spontaneous technical innovation does happens here Strategic leadership for technical innovation could happen here 25

a strategic role Local Systems this is where the developer Technical net works with peers Requirements Peer Developer this is where economies of Organisational End User scale and cost reduction is RequirementsRequirements achieved Remote, User/ Strategic Remote (commercial) Domain Local System technical (SaaS) expert Developer contacts } } this is where local innovation happens local context this is where the cost of outsourcing is mitigated remote context 26

student as producer?• Lincoln University (Mike Neary, Joss Winn)• Students actively innovating for the University, with ofﬁcial blessing and strategic investment 27

ﬁnally... 28

web managers anddevelopers, sitting in a tree....? 29

integration.... 30

...means the Web 31

devs & web management• URLs have become more important to developers• good management of URLs is going to become very important• there is some convergence between CMS and application platform - e.g. Drupal• tension between the desire to hide complexity from the user (e.g. Google Chrome disguising the ‘location bar’) and good practice on the read/write web - making URLs ‘cool’ and ‘hackable’ 32

“linking you” • Research on how institutions currently arrange their identiﬁers • URI 101 • Recommendations & data model • Space-time • domains and institutional URIshttp://lncn.eu/toolkit 33

open institutional data• Open Data and the Institutional Web at IWMW 2011 • Chris Gutteridge • Dave Challis 34

key information sets• together with the general trend towards open data, KIS is likely to drive better information management practice in HEIs 35

the mobile campus 36

your localdeveloper might just be asuper-hero - get to know them just in case! 37

thank youhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/ p.walk@ukoln.ac.uk and thanks to Marieke and Brian! 38

image credits• All images (c) Paul Walk and licensed CC-BY except for: • General Electric: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ooocha/2780071340/ sizes/s/in/photostream/ • Colgate: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/ 3909708551/sizes/s/in/photostream/ • Microsoft: http://www.flickr.com/photos/techshownetwork/ 2961688276/sizes/s/in/photostream/ • 3M: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/42905995/sizes/ s/in/photostream/ • Black & Decker: http://www.flickr.com/photos/toolstop/ 4514199590/sizes/s/in/photostream/ • Cook book: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigcrow/3381550945/ 39

Strategic development in a local HEI context

by Paul Walk on Jul 27, 2011

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Strategic development in a local HEI context Presentation Transcript