Why the intangibles matter most in timetabling transformation

For the last nine months I’ve worked alongside a small team to re-design the Timetabling function of a New Zealand university. We’ve covered all aspects, from helping build a new data collection tool through to designing a new team structure.

We recently wrapped up our official involvement, and it was a good opportunity for me to consider lessons learned: is there a “formula” to making university timetabling work effectively?

Making change stick

My biggest reflection is this: it’s the intangibles that make the biggest difference to success or failure. It’s one thing to put in place new timetabling mechanics — a new system, a new governance group, even a new team. But if these individual interventions aren’t connected to a bigger set of objectives, and sequenced in a way that makes sense and builds confidence and momentum, they won’t make a lasting difference.

First, it’s valuable to establish guiding principles that senior academic leaders can all buy into. Good principles will give the Timetabling team a guiding direction to come back to and help manage difficult tradefoff conversations. But if these principles aren’t concrete and measurable with broad buy-in, they won’t help much.

Second, it’s important to have a clearly articulated timetabling process with standardised roles and responsibilities across faculties and schools. If you don’t have this, it’s very difficult to achieve automation efficiencies and use systems well. But a clear process is only valuable if people commit to every part of it and know their role.

Third, for those principles and processes to take hold, you need a timetabling governance group made up of senior academics and faculty representatives — one with a clear mandate, strong academic leadership and a focused agenda. University timetabling is a complex process and having broad representation helps you account for the many different disciplinary and pedagogical needs, but only if that group is empowered to act on them. The most important intangible of all Beyond this, the most important intangible of all was having a clear case for change that the whole team believed in. We started every workshop, every meeting with the same set of key messages about what was broken about timetabling and what our overall objectives were.

About six months into the project, when we already had broad awareness and involvement, the DVC(A) was asked at a staff forum “But what’s wrong with Timetabling?” This just emphasised the need to keep returning to the case for change again and again with every new audience we spoke to.

Inevitably, we ran into some opposition at certain points in the project. By continuing to return to the case for change and our objectives, we were able to maintain the trust of staff in the overall project, even when conversations got difficult.   A spirit of partnership

Coming back to our New Zealand client, what I’m most proud of is our ability to work as a joint team to deliver impact. That’s as much a result of the client team as it is of AptoNow — if not more so. Their willingness to lean into difficult conversations, hold themselves accountable, and set ambitious goals made all the difference. If there is a formula for timetabling transformation, the client team is half of it. We’ll continue checking in with them, and when this year’s timetable is published we’ll definitely be raising a glass to celebrate!