Data-Driven Approaches to Sunsetting Technology

The proliferation of technology in higher education has turned the IT organization into a critical campus enabler. Almost every project on campus today is an IT project, requiring some input or guidance from technology leaders in both implementation and continued support.

While IT shoulders these new projects and technologies, leaders across campus—and sometimes IT staff themselves—remain reluctant to part with older, less efficient technologies and applications. As a result, IT is stuck supporting layers of aging and redundant technologies that continue to mount year after year.

This executive brief from IT Strategy Advisory Services compiles best practice research to help IT leaders leverage data and principled tactics to mitigate risks, eliminate legacy and redundant technologies, and recoup valuable IT costs and resources.

Gathering data to reduce subjectivity of tech decisions

Sunsetting technology is a more nuanced decision than just to keep or not to keep—it includes an array of choices such as investing, maintaining, refitting, replacing, or ultimately decommissioning. Combined with an assessment of technical issues, data can ensure that the IT organization takes the right approach for the specific technology decision under consideration. IT leaders should principally analyze two inputs: cost data, and value data. The crux of sunsetting lies in the middle of those two pieces: does the value of this product justify its costs?

But as costs become more complicated to calculate and value can be overestimated, IT leaders need principled and objective methods to collect cost-value data.

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Sunsetting decision frameworks that break the gridlock

The collaborative decision-making process of colleges and universities means that when it comes to sunsetting a technology, multiple stakeholders must be brought into the process—many of whom likely reside outside of IT and may even own the final decision. In those situations where IT is the advisory consultant, building consensus can sometimes feel impossible, even with data available.

Facing these kinds of issues, IT leaders will better set themselves up for success if they come prepared with a comparative framework to facilitate the decision-making.

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Hallmarks of change navigation to prepare campus for tomorrow

IT leaders must recognize that how and when you tell people you’re taking something away will significantly impact your ability to create lasting change. Poor communication and change management for sunsetting initiatives in particular can cause stakeholders to devalue IT and entertain the possibility of resurrecting decommissioned tools. Project leaders must ensure that they are delivering the right message, to the right people, through the right channels, at the right time.

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