This document summarizes the journey of an IT organization to become more service-oriented. It began with a need to address issues like limited resources, siloed teams, and a blame culture. Key steps in the journey included establishing service teams and processes, developing leadership and culture, and focusing on customer needs. Significant accomplishments included changing the culture to prioritize collaboration, empowerment, and alignment. Metrics now show high usage of services, knowledge base, and support along with good customer satisfaction ratings. The presentation provides details on the multi-year transformation journey.

1. Becoming a
Service-Oriented
IT Organization
A Cultural Journey
1

2. Presenters
Bret Heenan
Director Service Strategy
& Portfolio Management
bheenan@calpoly.edu
Brian W. Spolarich
Director Application, Data,
& Integration Services
brianspo@calpoly.edu
Matt Weber
Director Client Services
maweber@calpoly.edu
Wes Love
Organizational Improvement
& Transformation Specialist
welove@calpoly.edu
Tim Schmidt
Director Infrastructure
& Platform Services
tschmidt@calpoly.edu

3. Overview
• Our Case for Action
• Our Journey
• Significant Accomplishments
• Outcomes and Results
• Q&A
3

4. WHY
Our Case for Action
• Limited staffing and funding
• Focus on projects over operations
• Technical debt / slow pace of innovation
• Organized by technical silos / Unclear decision-making
• Blame / Fault Focused

5. What is Service Orientation?
Who are we serving and what are they trying to accomplish?
• One front door to service
• Services are defined and clear
• Idea to Service process
• Tiered support

6. Agents for Change and Transformation (ACT)
Nov 2017
OUR JOURNEY
June 2018
Runbook Template
August 2018
Service Review Committee
December 2018
"Get A Grip" Workshops
January 2019
PBR Organization
August 2019
Service Catalog & Knowledge Base
July 2019
Work Organizers
September 2019
ACT II
March 2020
COVID19 -> WFH
July 2020
Support Center – "ticketing"
July 2021
Centralization
Today
CAL STATE TECH CONNECT
Sept 2021
Zones of Support
Nov 2022
As-Is Runbooks
September 2018
Service Lifecycle
2
June 2023
Leadership Rock

7. Culture
Focus on behaviors over results
• Aligned our organization around service delivery
• Changed what we rewarded people and teams for
• Focused on working together and doing what was best for the customer
Peter Drucker

8. Fit For Purpose
Making things work for us
• Gleaned practices from ITIL, Agile, Lean, & DevOps
• Built organically from within – context matters
• Leveraged what was already working
• Adapted, adjusted, with constancy of purpose

9. How Did We Do It?
We focused on people, then process, then tools (yes, really!)
• Setting direction/vision/alignment
• Leadership development
• Education and training
• Accountability

10. Most Significant Accomplishment – Bret H.
Cultural Change
• Focusing on people
• Empowerment
• Orientation towards common outlook/behaviors
10

11. Most Significant Accomplishment – Matt W.
Setting and Aligning Direction
11
Organizational
Priorities
Individual
Efforts

12. Most Significant Accomplishment – Tim S.
Focus on Functional Teams
• Moving away from "blamestorming"
• Focus on building trust in leadership
• Hiring for talent and cultural fit over
'technical mercenaries'
12

13. Most Significant Accomplishment – Brian S.
Developed Leadership Team
• Mentoring and Focus
• ”First Team” concept
• “Right people / right seat”
13
Results
Accountability
Commitment
Productive Conflict
Trust
From Lencioni, ”Five Dysfunctions of a Team”

14. Agents for Change and Transformation (ACT)
Nov 2017
OUR JOURNEY
June 2018
Runbook Template
August 2018
Service Review Committee
December 2018
"Get A Grip" Workshops
January 2019
PBR Organization
August 2019
Service Catalog & Knowledge Base
July 2019
Work Organizers
September 2019
ACT II
March 2020
COVID19 -> WFH
July 2020
Support Center – "ticketing"
July 2021
Centralization
Today
CAL STATE TECH CONNECT
Sept 2021
Zones of Support
Nov 2022
As-Is Runbooks
September 2018
Service Lifecycle
2
June 2023
Leadership Rock

15. 15
Stats & Figures
Results
• Results from start of the school year,
September 2022
50K ITS Website & Service Catalog views
35K Knowledge Base views
4K Support Tickets
83.6% resolution at Tier 1
4.92 Customer Satisfaction Rating

16. Q&A