The Opportunity

The University of Bath (UoB) wanted to undertake a Discovery exercise to assess the existing IT delivery capability at the university and define a framework to support the future organisational design to deliver for the future.

Through a G-Cloud procurement exercise, RedRock was selected as UoB’s partner for this Discovery project to address and to deliver the IT delivery capability assessment. The achievement of the following goals was dependent on the success of the project:

1. Inform and enable the creation of a business case that can be presented to the Vice Chancellor for the transformation of the UoB DDaT team.
2. Start the UoB DDaT team on a journey of a 3 year delivery transformation that creates a delivery function that can respond to the demands of the university.
3. A redefined IT delivery framework that is aligned and informed by the organisational strategy of the university as a whole.

Our Solution & Approach

RedRock Managed Professional Service engagements are underpinned by the same core values of Client Enablement, Teams of Excellence, Impartiality and Ownership. Each engagement is directly overseen by one of our Senior Delivery Managers to ensure this.

The Discovery was structured into the key stages and was delivered with a fixed amount of time available. Based on the fixed budget, the team pre-mapped the timeline and deliverables into weekly sprints.

Agile methodology principles and associated governance and process were installed from the outset to ensure the team could react and manoeuvre to timely feedback, evolving thinking or issues. These proved very useful since during the engagement, there were changes in personnel within the UoB DDaT SLT (Senior Leadership Team). RedRock adapted and worked with the CDIO and existing/new SLT members to reshape the engagement as needed to keep delivery cadence high.

This project was delivered fully remotely utilising modern collaboration tooling and technology to maintain frequent contact with the team and transparency of progress and information throughout.

The Outcome

The final report included future state organisational designs coupled with a series of recommendations across all of the teams within the DDaT team.  The recommendations were to be realised through a number of mechanisms:

• Delivered as part of implementing the new organisational design
• Achieved following additional work led by IT but supported by the wider UoB team
• Achieved following additional work led by the wider UoB team and outside of the direct control of the IT team.

The UoB DDaT team immediately started to implement the organisational design change and began a journey transforming the team.  This included:

1. Major reorganisation and restructure to align to the models recommended by the RedRock Discovery.
2. The appointment of a Deputy Director for Digital & Data.
3. The creation of a Programme Office and appointment of a new head of to run this function.

The DDaT team started to see some of the proposed benefit realisation from reorganising the team.