Laurier IT Priorities

Abstract

The newly appointed IT officer at a smaller Canadian university must reassess her priorities. Given her mandate by a president who has just left, she wonders what the direction of the new president will be. With two months on the job, she has found things to be quite different from what she had originally understood. In particular, the administrative computing system has serious problems and is not Year 2000 compliant. Furthermore, it is heavily customised and there is no documentation of the changes. Resources are an issue, as there is little slack for new initiatives. She has identified many problem areas requiring attention. At this time she is unsure of the seriousness of these problems and how much effort will be required to resolve them. How can she quickly prioritize these issues so she can start dealing with the most important ones?