Quality Management in a Campus IT Organization: An Interview with Hall & Towler, Harvard University Office for Information Technolog
y


Copyright 1991 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 1991. 
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             QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN A CAMPUS IT ORGANIZATION

             AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVE HALL AND CONNIE TOWLER, 
          HARVARD UNIVERSITY OFFICE FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
                           by Jane N. Ryland

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Stephen C. Hall is Director of the Office for Information Technology at
Harvard University, where he is responsible for Harvard's central IT
services and reports to the Vice President for Finance. Steve is mainly
responsible for service provision, infrastructure planning,
administration of the Harvard quality initiative, organizational
development, and other general management tasks. OIT, like all Harvard
departments, is fully responsible for its plans, services, resources,
organization, management, and results (financial and service quality).
The department's recent achievements include the Harvard University
Network and the Information Utility.

Steve and other members of his department are actively involved in
EDUCOM, CAUSE, NERCOMP, Society for Information Management, the
Coalition for Networked Information CUPID project, and NEARnet--all
activities supporting IT in higher education.

Prior to his position at Harvard, Steve was responsible for running
the Lexington office consulting operations for Nolan, Norton & Co. He
began his professional career in information technology working for the
IBM Corporation, where he held several consulting, marketing, and
engineering positions. He holds a B.S. degree in mathematics from Tufts
University (1966).

Constance F. Towler is Associate Director of Quality Improvement in the
Office for Information Technology (OIT) at Harvard University,
responsible for the quality improvement process in the OIT and Harvard
as a whole. In this position, Connie works with the University Interest
Group to advise the Harvard community on the use of the Harvard Quality
Process and leads the design team for the quality enhancement management
and staff training. She also chairs the OIT Quality Council responsible
for the design and implementation of the HQP in the Office for
Information Technology.

Before being appointed to her current position, she was Director of
Personnel Services in Harvard's Office of Human Resources. Prior to
that, she held positions in a number of offices at Harvard, including
OIT's Technology Product Center, the Office of the Vice President for
Administration, Financial Systems and Information Technology, and the
Harvard Computing Center.

Connie holds an M.Ed. in Management from Cambridge College and has
participated in seminars and workshops in management, human resources
functions and administration, and management information systems at
Boston University, Harvard University, and Washington University in St.
Louis, Missouri.

Jane N. Ryland is President of CAUSE. She has held several previous
positions in higher education and in the information technology
industry.

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Much is being written about Total Quality Management in higher
education, and we know there is a tremendous supporting role that
information technology can play in TQM efforts. But what happens when
campus IT professionals decide to focus on improving their own
organization?

With two years of experience in implementing a quality improvement
process, the Office for Information Technology (OIT) at Harvard
University is a good example of an organization that is striving to do
just that. Like most campus IT organizations, OIT's mission is to
provide core information technology products and services, as well as
information technology planning and advisory services, to the campus
community. But Harvard's OIT is somewhat atypical in that it provides
this wide range of services on a fee basis in a very competitive
environment in which campus customers are free to choose outside
services. OIT's Information Services, including computing, reprographic,
and other services, are offered for customers in faculties,
administrative offices, and libraries, and OIT Network Services provide
the entire University with a telephone system, video and data network,
sales, distribution, and maintenance of microcomputers. The OIT staff
consists of more than 250 people.

Three years ago, OIT Director Stephen Hall began to research
successful programs in organizations that have been leaders in the
quality management movement. The four major goals of OIT are quality
service to customers, quality of work life for staff, responsible
financial management, and technical excellence. With quality already the
underlying theme of the subordinate goals of OIT, implementing a quality
management process was a natural direction for the organization to
pursue.

Prompted by the success of quality management programs in many
Fortune 500 companies, especially the Xerox Corporation and Tennant
Company, OIT took several steps to establish what has come to be known
as the Harvard Quality Process (HQP):

  *  appointed an Associate Director of Quality

  *  formed a Quality Council to serve as a steering committee

  *  trained staff in the quality process

  *  established a University-wide Quality Improvement Interest Group

  *  initiated a University-wide strategic planning session for quality

  *  initiated several quality projects

Based on a team concept, one of the critical factors necessary to
accomplish the quality process is ensuring that all employees have the
opportunity to participate. OIT is working toward adapting and
integrating the process into the work of all units and their services
and has made good progress to date.

We are pleased that OIT's Steve Hall and Associate Director of
Quality Connie Towler were willing to be interviewed about the Harvard
Quality Process implementation. We hope the questions we raised and
their answers will provide some insights into Harvard's experience that
will be helpful to information technology organizations at other
colleges and universities who are interested in the potential of quality
management concepts.

Why did Harvard's OIT decide to 
implement a quality management program?

Hall: One of the first things we'd like to say is that we avoid the use
of the word "program." We've done that for some real reasons. It's a
process--one of skill building and organizational learning in which both
individuals in groups and the organization at large go through a
learning curve. We're just starting up that learning curve.

Towler: And where programs come and go, this is a process that stays
with you and grows with your organization. But to answer your question,
I think one reason we became interested in the quality process is that
OIT lives in a very competitive environment within Harvard; none of the
services, except for maybe the telephone service, are services that
people have to use. We have to compete with the outside world,
basically, for the services that we deliver. In a way we're like any
other company that needs to satisfy its customers, or its customers
don't come back again. So it's really fundamental.

Hall: And unlike any technical service or specific service we offer,
each of which has its own success measures, quality management was
really the only single unifying theme that an organization as diverse as
ours has. While it may have already been there as a service goal, the
quality emphasis really has a universal appeal in that it applies to all
staff, whether they be managers or responsible for direct delivery of
service day to day.

Towler: You could say that two of the most motivating factors for us
were the customer satisfaction and the employee participation. You're
satisfying the customer who's buying services from you (your external
customer), and you're satisfying your employees (your internal customer)
by including all of them in this process. Everyone benefits and it's a
morale booster.

Was it necessary to seek executive-level 
support outside OIT to initiate
HQP?

Hall: It's always a good idea to have the support of your managers.
Connie and I went to see Bob Scott and Sally Zeckhauser, two vice
presidents who have responsibility for a large percentage of staff in
the service departments at Harvard. We wanted to inform them about the
process and what it meant, what it didn't mean, and what we were going
to start doing. We asked for their support, which they were happy to
give.

What was their level of awareness about 
quality programs at the time you
approached them?

Hall: I would not say it was very high. We had spent a certain amount of
time studying two or three companies, talking with professors at Harvard
Business School, and asking questions. We had been going through a "get
smart" program, and had been learning about it on our own before we
briefed them.

So you were able, when you briefed 
them, to give them the benefit of
what you had already learned yourself?

Towler: Yes, and don't forget we're talking about a year and a half to
two years ago, when the awareness of quality in the country was much
lower; there's been a much broader campaign toward "let's do the quality
thing" since then.

What are the major components of the 
process as you are implementing or
envisioning it, especially what are 
the major accomplishments that you
have achieved?

Hall: It consists of a lot of critical elements, as any management
process would--tools and measures, management behaviors, recognition and
reward, transition teams, communications, education, and training. These
are all things that have been elements of the success of the process.
There's a lot of training on specific skills that everybody
participating in the process is expected to learn--basic things such as
Interactive Skills--how you behave when you're working with others--and
Meeting Management Skills--everything from scheduling to timeliness: 
what you put on an agenda, how you follow up, and how you allot time for
discussion on various topics.

There are a couple of major processes that are taught as skills.
One is a Problem-solving Process, something you'll find in most
organizations that use this process, to facilitate group problem-
solving. And there's another major process called the Quality
Improvement Process, which is a structured way of looking at an existing
service or process within an organization and making incremental quality
improvements.

Towler: The quality improvement process is also used when you are
designing something new. And to answer the second part of your question,
about what we've done, I think we can best describe it as a two-pronged
approach. One approach is to do some planning around quality and the
other approach is to actually get started and find out what it's all
about and how it applies to our work environment. So for the "doing" end
of it, the quality teams have been applying the problem-solving tools to
real work problems.

Would you consider that the 
process is a success so far?

Towler: So far it certainly is!

I know you've probably seen a lot of 
changes as a result of the process
within your organization. Which ones 
might you identify as being the
most significant?

Towler: I would say the participation at all levels of the organization.
We've been doing some training and it's tremendously empowering and
exciting to see people take hold of this problem-solving process and
make it their own. They buy into it in a way that is unusual for
training and they really get excited by what they're learning. What
happens is that when they go back to their work places, they are going
to be on quality teams that actually solve operational problems and
follow them through to implementation. Along with that, of course, there
has to be the management commitment to allow that empowerment to really
happen. So there are lots of elements that have to work together for it
to be a success. We've only been involved in HQP for about a year and a
half so it's very early on in the process for us.

In terms of the management commitment 
for the people who have received
this kind of training and now want to 
put it into effect, has that been
pretty successful? Have you gotten the 
kind of commitment that you
needed from those managers?

Towler: I think that we can say that we're in good shape in that area. I
think there's always a little bit of room for improvement because people
are still learning what this means to them in their work life. I mean,
when you get into a process like this you're changing the culture of a
work environment. That is one of the things that takes the most time. It
also, of course, takes time to train everybody, but changing the way in
which you work from a hierarchical control process to a consensus
decision-making process is a big change in an organization. People are
on the one hand saying, yes I understand this and I want to do it, but
when the actual experience takes place they have some mixed feelings
sometimes. But that's only normal. It doesn't happen over night. It's
not fast or easy.

I would think that people, and your staff
 in particular, would need to find time 
to integrate this while maintaining "business 
as usual." Ultimately one would hope that 
it would become an integral part of the
way they work and really facilitate work 
as usual. But until that happens, there's 
probably an evolutionary process where people 
see this as something that's vying for their 
time and attention vis-a-vis their other 
responsibilities. Could you comment on where
you are in that stage?

Towler: I think you're right to identify that as a problem. I think
where we are now is that we've built enough momentum that people are
asking to go to training.

Hall: Any organization's going to have skepticism about new programs and
initiatives of any sort. It's not unusual to hear comment that basically
translates into "what's in it for me." What's refreshing about this
process is that staff begin to talk substantively about what's in it for
them, and that's good. Individuals tell me how much they have enjoyed
participating and why they're enjoying their jobs because their opinion
is asked, or they're participating in an activity they hadn't done in
the past.

I see that process as a part of organizational maturing. The
organization is learning some more skills that everybody has to
practice, whether they happen to be in a supervisory role or a staff
role. Our organization has always done a fair amount of training in
skills whether they be technical skills or interpersonal skills. But
quite frankly it has been more organizational or management skills or
interactive skills training that most individuals have received some
help on in the past. The quality process has expanded our training to
include more people and basic skills for everyone, no matter what their
level in the organization or responsibility.

While there are always some skeptics about having time to train, I
think that the "what's in it for me" is translating into "this is what's
in it for me" and hence more demand for training. Also, the managers who
may have been skeptical--and there have been some quite skeptical only
because they didn't invent it--finally discover ways to use the process
and then they create demand for themselves, as well. So for many reasons
the demand is increasing for that training. That's a problem we want to
have!

Towler: We've had managers who have gone to cover shifts for people
going to training. That's a level of commitment that we're happy about.
We also had a case of an associate director who went to man the
telephones in an area so people could go to training; that shows real
commitment and the staff feels very positive about that. But there's
never enough time to do everything and there are pressures that people
feel. You know they like it when they show up everyday for training.
They're finding a way, between them and their managers--and sometimes
it's the managers that are coming--to get the job done, whether it's a
little extra time or whatever is required, they're doing it, they're
putting in extra effort.

I know that Connie was appointed 
Associate Director of Quality, but
other than that have there been any 
other changes in OIT's organization
as a consequence of your quality process?

Towler: Not in the formal sense, not in terms of the organization chart,
in the structure itself, but Steve is fond of saying that everybody does
quality. We have not set up an organization that just does quality. I'm
the only person who's assigned that job and it's a job that will go away
in time. We have a Quality Council and they are managers who spend an
amount of time each month in helping to do some research and planning
and we're trying to do just that, to instill this into people so that it
becomes part of their job.

Hall: What's important about the quality process is that it includes all
the good things an organization does that don't show on the chart. When
you cross organizational boundaries, things get done in a more fluid
way. We have sticky points around that, but I can see some of those
disappearing with the use of the process.

Are there any measurable increases in
productivity or specific cost savings 
that you can identify as a result
of your quality process implementation?

Hall: One of the things that we didn't mention earlier in the techniques
is that the whole concept of benchmarking is frequently used. How do you
know you have quality when you see it? It's a question of comparison.
Compared to where we want to be or compared to where some other
organization is that we consider a competitor, how do we know we're
doing well? Well, there's a lot we can do with benchmarking to help do
that. And in a way that's re-inventing the methods of management that
have always been with us, reporting on critical success measures,
looking at the competition, and so forth. But it's different in that
we're including staff who are actually doing things, not just managers.
We have several dozen teams that are working on different aspects of
Harvard OIT operations and there are several who have either
accomplished productivity improvements or are targeting specific
improvements.

Towler: This is one of the things in the service environment that is not
easy, as you alluded to earlier. We've been learning about quantifiable
measures from people like Federal Express--they do intensive service
measurements. And yet other things are very easy to measure. For
example, in one of our copy center areas we had an 85 percent reduction
in data entry error rate as a result of the efforts of one of the teams,
and also a 90 percent reduction in training time in that same area. You
know how long it took you to train earlier; how long does it take you
now that you're done with your problem-solving team?

What role are information technologies 
playing in the quality process
implementation?

Hall: We were talking about this the other day, trying to use quality as
a theme for some outreach programs in information technology services.
But the role is only indirect; it hasn't been the prime focus. We can
use information technology internally to help us do a better job, do
better reporting and measuring wherever we can. A lot of information
projects are now under way within OIT where we're using the quality
process to improve on the results of IT efforts. But your question
raises the issue to the next logical step: how to package IT services we
haven't thought about--yet.

You've talked a little bit about the 
response within the Harvard
community. Any other comments on what 
the response has been so far to
the process?

Towler: Well, I think it's curiosity. People want to know more about
what HQP means. For instance this afternoon I'm going to the University
Health Services to present what I think it is to a team that the
director has put together to investigate TQM concepts and what they
might mean for their organization. We do presentations at various areas
around campus and sometimes people come back and ask for more help, more
training. So there's a good deal of curiosity and talk that's being done
about it. In a couple of areas some progress is being made with
implementations--problem-solving or strategic planning--to get things
started.

Is HQP an institution-wide process and, if so, what is OIT's role with
respect to the rest of the community?

Hall: I think it's important to clarify that OIT is a service
organization, and there are many other organizations which are service
organizations in the University. For natural reasons these organizations
seem to have all taken an interest together in quality management. We
were a few steps ahead, having investigated it, but it didn't take much
to have multiple organizations agree to participate in an interest group
and start learning and applying it.

I would say since we started first, we're probably furthest ahead,
but in the long run, other people are going to be equally enthusiastic
about it, use it, and find a lot of good benefit from it. There's little
hierarchy at Harvard, so it's not likely that quality management will
ever have as broad a base as in other organizations. That's not
something that's likely to occur in an organization as diverse as
Harvard.

HQP is an institution-wide process at Harvard, but it's offered as
a service. If people want to learn more about it and want some help in
getting started, that's what Connie's job is. OIT just happens to be her
first example--a live case. We set it up on that basis, and that's what
Bob and Sally agreed to do when we went to brief them earlier about the
process. So I would expect that as HQP matures in OIT and other places,
there will be new things the Harvard administration will do that will
make it more of an institution-wide process. I wouldn't be surprised if
the Chronicle had an interview with somebody in two years in Harvard
administration about how he invented the whole thing, with a pilot that
started in OIT, or something like that. But that's good. And there's
plenty of room for other leaders to emerge, add their own twist to it,
and keep improving on it.

When people buy in and make it 
their own, you know you've achieved
success!

Hall: We're quite happy to set a modest goal and just make sure it's
used very well to help us do a better job as a service organization in
OIT. We already know that several other organizations are doing the
same, so it's already exceeded our expectations in that regard, and we
expect now that that will keep going.

Something that has always struck me 
as interesting is that many of us
working on the administrative side 
of a college or university have
faculty in our business schools who 
are dealing from the researcher/scholarly 
perspective on  many of the issues that 
we're trying to deal with in real life. 
Have you  had much interaction with Harvard
Business School faculty who are doing 
research or have scholarly interest in 
quality theory or practice?

Hall: There's a quality practice group in the Business School and Earl
Sasser is the individual we've talked to several times, a professor
who's coached us and said, "Try this, don't try that." One of his
postdocs helped us early on, picking case studies for an outside
planning session, basically looking for points of validation. We don't
have a tight linkage with HBS. We have not asked them to watch this one
closely, but they have been very helpful all along. We also know of
other service departments that have done the same thing, so this is
something that's natural for people to take advantage of within the
Harvard community.

From reading material about Harvard's 
quality process, it's clear that
Xerox and Tennant played roles in your 
implementation, but what specifically 
did they offer you?

Hall: Well, Tennant was probably our first major encounter with a
corporation that had been working seriously at quality. I guess it was
my first opportunity to see something up close when I was invited to
talk with them about their use of information technology. After visiting
Tennant and seeing what they were doing with quality, I learned more
from them about quality than they learned from me about information
technology. I ended up trying to relate the quality principles back to
the information technology things we were talking about at Tennant and
at OIT.

When was this?

Hall: Three and a half years ago. Roger Hale, who's their CEO, wrote a
book entitled The Quest for Quality, which talks about some of the
problems they've had in manufacturing and how they started working on
the quality process to improve on that. To reduce it to a couple of
words: beat the Japanese at their own game in his industry. One thing
led to another as we learned some more about it.
In that learning process we saw what Xerox was doing. We visited
Rochester to learn about the Xerox advanced copiers. During the visit we
saw something of the quality process, and some casual conversations
turned into some serious proselytizing on their part. They understood
the importance of telling their customers about what they were doing, so
they invited us to several sessions to learn about it, and then we
started to ask more questions. Connie can tell you more about that.

Towler: Xerox was very generous with their resources. They provided a
person who did orientation sessions for us on the Harvard campus. We
also did some specific skills training and, in fact, the people who are
now doing training here at Harvard, myself and Douglas Renick, were
trained by Xerox. There's something that happens in this business that's
pretty unlike any other business and that is that people borrow from one
another very openly and people give very openly.

Hall: In contrast to recent concerns about plagiarism just across the
river!

Towler: We reference those who give us materials! Xerox has been very
generous in that respect. We would not have gotten off to quite as fast
a start if it had not been for them. We are really very appreciative.

Hall: The support we've gotten from these companies has been mostly
along the lines of experience sharing, skill building, or training; it
has not been process consulting. Most of them have gone to outside
consultants for process development. I'm not sure if many organizations
have had the experience that we have. We decided to roll up our sleeves
and do process design for ourselves. In some cases it's worked, in
other cases we've learned the hard way, but generally it's less
expensive to do it the way we're doing it. That's been very critical for
us. We can look back and say we have spent very little green money. The
way we do it is to get everybody to gradually use some new skills to do
their job a little better. I'm sure that Connie and I would love to
consult with somebody else about how to do this and avoid mistakes, but
we tended to avoid hiring those outside consultants for ourselves.
Connie has brought in a lot of outside speakers.

Towler: We've made many contacts at conferences and through various
organizations and often times people have come here because, I guess,
it's Harvard, in some sense--to get the experience with working with a
group at Harvard.

There's one more question that I'd 
like to ask. Our interest, of course,
in sharing something like this in 
CAUSE/EFFECT is to point out exemplary
programs or processes that other 
institutions might be able to emulate.
That's the whole idea of sharing, 
something that's a key part of CAUSE's
mission and what we want to do. 
So we're interested in helping other
institutions become aware of the 
benefits of a process like this and
it's important that they get some 
idea about how they might go about
learning to implement it or begin 
a program themselves. They may not all
have the opportunities to appoint 
a Connie as an Associate Director of
Quality. They may not have the opportunity 
to go to a Xerox or a Tennant
and get that personal interaction and 
the benefit of their experience.
Do you have any words of wisdom or 
advice for how another CAUSE member
campus could begin this without the 
resources you had available?

Hall: Well, this gives us a good chance to plug the next CAUSE meeting,
because I believe that you're going to have speakers in a track in this
area in the future. It's too big a national movement to ignore--how it
applies to a major service profession on campus--and that's what CAUSE 
is all about. I think that over the past few years there has probably 
been a preoccupation with other major causes, if you will, whereas this 
one has largely been in the background at EDUCOM or CAUSE. The quality
process has clearly been one of the alternatives available to people,
but rarely have you seen information technology improvement or
constructive use of the quality process as general topics, at either
CAUSE, EDUCOM, or most CIO programs. It could be that CAUSE will be the
first organization to really get at it in a serious way.

Towler: I'd like to add that I don't think it's necessary for people to
appoint someone full-time to implement a quality process. I think often
what happens is it's a part of someone else's job, doing some research
and making the contacts, and just having some time to do that.

Connie, what was your job before you became Associate Director of
Quality?

Towler: I was a director in the Office of Human Resources. Having a
"people" background has helped me with it because it's a people-oriented
process. But quality theory has not come up through the HR ranks. It's
come through manufacturing and sales.

Anything you'd like to add?

Hall: I think our experience of visiting a couple of the companies with
whom we were working, and asking them what they were doing in this area,
was the thread we had at the start. After pulling on that thread we
learned more and more. I think that the same thing would work for other
organizations. There are now many excellent TQM examples in this
country. Learning from another organization is part of what this is all
about.

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For further reading:

We are grateful to Connie Towler for providing the following suggested
references for learning more about quality management.

Berry, Thomas H. Managing the Total Quality Transformation. New York:
McGraw Hill, 1991.

Block, Peter. The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.

Brassard, Michael. The Memory Jogger Plus+: Featuring the Seven
Management and Planning Tools. Methuen, Mass.: GOAL/QPC, 1989.

Bossert, James L. Quality Function Deployment: A Practitioner's
Approach. Milwaukee, Wisc.: ASQC Quality Press, 1991.

Cornesky, Robert A., and colleagues. W. Edward Deming: Improving Quality
in Colleges and Universities. Madison, Wisc.: Magna Publications, 1990.

Crosby, Philip B. Quality is Free. New York: McGraw Hill, 1979.

Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Center for
Advanced Engineering Study, 1986.

Garvin, David A. Managing Quality: The Strategic and Competitive Edge.
New York: Free Press, 1988.

Hudiburg, John J. (former Chairman and CEO, Florida Power & Light).
Winning with Quality, The FPL Story. White Plains, N.Y.: Quality
Resources, A Division of the Kraus Organization Limited, 1991.

Juran, J.M. Juran on Planning for Quality. New York: Free Press, 1988.

Maccoby, Michael. Why Work, Motivating and Leading the New Generation.
New York: Touchstone, 1988.

Miller, Richard I. Applying the Deming Method to Higher Education For
More Effective Human Resource Management. Washington, D.C.: The College
and University Personnel Association (CUPA), 1991.

Perigord, Michel. Achieving Total Quality Management, A Program for
Action. Cambridge, Mass.: Productivity Press, 1990.

Scholtes, Peter R., et al. The Team Handbook: How to Improve Quality
with Teams. Madison, Wisc.: Joiner, 1988.

Spanbauer, Stanley J. Quality First in Education ... Why Not? Appleton,
Wisc. : Fox Valley Technical College Foundation, 1987. (A companion to
the Cornesky book.)

Walton, Mary. Deming Management at Work. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons,
1990.

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