Crowd Sourcing Pilot

I've been thinking for some time about ways to get a larger community involved in high-level IT discussions.  As technology advances, it gets easier and easier to use crowd sourcing methods to bring more, and more informed, voices into a conversation.  Below you'll find a link to an interesting tool called IdeaScale.


IdeaScale is like Google Moderator on steroids.  Basically, you can do three things:

1. Add a new idea
2. Vote on an existing idea
3. Comment on an idea

The gist is that anyone can put an idea into the discussion, people then vote the best ideas to the top, and they can discuss their opinions on each idea.

Soooo....I would like to try this out.  I've chosen a topic that's near and dear to a lot of people and a key component of our emerging IT strategic plan - collaboration.  I'd like to get an understanding of people's expectations and desires for collaborating, so we can make sure this section of the plan hits the mark.  I'm looking for three kinds of ideas:

1. Examples of collaboration that currently work.
2. Examples of collaboration that currently don't work.
3. Examples of how you'd like to see collaboration work.

Hopefully, the ideas already in the list will get you thinking and make you comfortable participating in, and adding to, the conversation.

What I'd like you to do...

1. Sign up for the site and use it.  Add your ideas to the mix.  Vote and discuss the ideas you see. 
2. If you're in a position to talk to faculty or students, spend five minutes with a few of them and ask them for a single example to add to the list.  Then add it to the site.
3. If you know of anyone who would like to participate in this pilot (or if you are on this blog, but don't have access to IdeaScale) drop a note to ceag@umich.edu and I'll add them (or you) to the site. The more people in the conversation, the more robust the results.

We'll run the pilot for about two weeks, starting March 23.  I'm not sure what we'll do with the results (or if they'll even be useful).  For those of you who participate, I'll be asking for feedback on the tool and crowd sourcing at the U in general.

Here's the link to the IdeaScale pilot.  I thank you in advance for your participation.  I really think that if we can get this right, we can make a material change on how high-level, strategic discussions are held at U-M.

Identifying Stakeholder Roles in the Strategic Plan

In order to move forward with strategic plan, we are attempting to document the stakeholders in the plan and their roles.  Examples of the value of this exercise are helping us understand exactly who has to approve a chapter (and who doesn't!) and who is guaranteed formal input (and who isn't).

In order to do this, we've put together a Responsibility Assignment Matrix.

If you are a chapter author, we are asking that you add missing people or groups to the left hand column and then fill in letters (and blank cells) the best you can, for both your chapter and any place else that you feel comfortable filling out.  We understand you might not get it exactly right - a lot of the value of the chart is to launch some discussions around, for example, who actually gets an approval vote, or who isn't guaranteed formal discussion on a document.

For our chart we're only using three letters. They are used as follows:
R = Responsible - the people/groups who are doing the actual creation of the chapter
A = Approver - the people/groups who get a vote on the approval of the chapter.
C = Consulted - the people/groups who provide formal feedback before the chapter is approved.
Blank - no special stake. Informal feedback only.

Due to the crowdsourced nature of the strategic plan, anyone is welcome to provide feedback on the chapters, but 'C's are guaranteed a formal opportunity to discuss the document via a meeting or other forum.

Here is the link to the spreadsheet.  We would like an initial pass from each author no later than Friday, Feb 15th.

Please use the discussion space below for any questions or comments you may have.