Summary of Enable

The Enable project was about managing and sustaining innovation, it wasn’t a project focused on developing outputs. Enable aimed to change culture and behaviour in the University around supporting innovation and development of new awards. By using P3M3 and tools such as Enterprise Architecture and TOGAF, the project developed an approach to Change Management for the University which it piloted using existing internal initiatives (which were running in isolation) and by starting some of its own. By having a coherent change approach to projects, we envisioned a number of benefits. Stakeholders engaged in projects would not be swamped by the different changes to processes, systems and roles involved in curriculum design. This would stop stakeholders from feeling jaded from the number of different initiatives they had to be involved in. Changes would be clearly noted and seen as part of a beneficial plan rather than being in conflict with one another. These benefits have been realised within the piloting of the approach across a number of internal initiatives.

Whilst piloting the Change Management approach, the Enable team created a number of initiatives with their own outputs to support course development:

• A database application to support external examiner business processes
• An online Flexible Learning Advice and Guidance tool
• An tool for auditing individual and course design team skills
• An online development toolkit supporting Technology Supported Learning

These outputs, which emerged as the project developed, demonstrated the value of changing behaviour using new tools to the institution to create a coherent approach to change management, including the value of mapping issues and changes expected using Enterprise Architecture, and the use of a common framework (XCRI) to manage information. The message of the requirement for central Change Management has been picked up by a number of senior staff in the University and a new role, Head of Change Management has been created and filled. The XCRI framework has now been recognised as of value by the Quality Service, Enterprise Architecture is being used by our Partnerships department to support changes in their roles, processes and systems (in particular with communicating with the Information Services department), it is also being used by the Learning Development and Innovation (LDI) team to investigate assessment processes and systems.