WashU IT is on a mission to strengthen how we work together. The WashU IT Operating Model effort was collectively developed in 2024 with a clear goal: to ensure IT functions are efficient, aligned with business priorities, adaptable, secure and cost-effective.
Melinda Schmidt, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief of Staff, serves as project sponsor.
“The Operating Model was never about change for the sake of change,” Schmidt said. “It was designed to bring greater clarity, alignment and discipline to how we operate as one WashU IT team and deliver value across the university, particularly as demand continues to grow and WashU looks to us to enable excellence and innovation in administrative services, teaching, learning, research and patient care.”
At its core, the Operating Model strengthens the system behind the work — how decisions are made, how demand flows through the organization and how effort aligns to strategy.
After thoughtful evaluation, four initiatives were selected as the most important drivers of impact — areas where focused effort would produce the greatest value and benefit teams broadly across WashU IT.
Today, we are actively advancing three of the four initiatives, and meaningful progress is underway.
One key focus area is Demand and Capacity Management, which strengthens our ability to plan for and manage resources (people, systems and infrastructure) to meet current and future demands effectively. As work intake increases and priorities shift, recognizing early signs of workload imbalance becomes essential.
This initiative aims to establish a long-term strategy and technical solution for managing service demand within WashU IT. It focuses on allocating resources to the highest-priority, highest-value initiatives and ensuring project work aligns with the IT strategic plan.
“When we strengthen how we balance demand with capacity across the organization, we create a healthier environment for our teams and deliver stronger results overall,” Schmidt said.
IT Governance has developed and piloted a new demand‑management workflow, and the project team has completed the business requirements and use cases needed to evaluate vendors. A technical solution has been selected and will be implemented in the coming months.
In parallel, WashU IT is advancing a second initiative: Service Portfolio. This work includes developing a standardized definition and classification for IT portfolios and their services, along with respective service owners. The goal is to better organize and define IT offerings to improve service management, communication and customer/user understanding. An initial list of portfolios is complete, services within those portfolios are being finalized, and preliminary work to enter portfolios and services into ServiceNow is underway.
The third core initiative, Knowledge Management, focuses on developing a strategy and implementing systems and processes to capture, distribute and effectively use organizational knowledge. The project team is assessing and building a framework that addresses all aspects of knowledge to ensure knowledge content is relevant, usable, searchable, easy to find, accessible, accurate, and well-maintained. The proof of concept is complete, metadata standards are being finalized and preparations for the pilot are in progress. In addition, work on the SharePoint repository for knowledge not currently stored in ServiceNow is also underway.
The fourth initiative, Service Level Management, remains on the roadmap and will advance as dependencies allow. It aims to establish formal agreements that define expected service levels, measurable standards and accountability.
“The deliberate choice to focus on a few initiatives at a time reflects core Operating Model principles: clear prioritization and sustainable execution,” Schmidt said.
Although the Operating Model is aspirational in nature, the progress being made is practical, Schmidt said. It is already shaping how managers assess workload, how initiatives are evaluated and how strategic conversations unfold.
“The Operating Model is no longer simply a framework; it is increasingly embedded in the decisions we make and the actions we take to advance work every day,” she said.
“This work positions WashU IT to scale with clarity rather than complexity,” Schmidt said. “It strengthens our ability to deliver consistently, align with strategy and serve as a trusted strategic technology partner to the university in support of WashU’s mission. This is steady, intentional progress — building a strong foundation for how we operate moving forward.”
To learn more about the Operating Model and its four initiatives, visit the WashU IT Operating Model webpage, where the full document is available. Melinda Schmidt will share additional updates during the WashU IT All Hands on Feb. 25, as the Operating Model has been formally established as an FY26 goal for WashU IT.