Improving scheduling

Breakthrough: For the rapidly growing college, scheduling had been a challenge for years, eventually turning into a crisis. The impact was significant. The low quality of schedules led to increasing dissatisfaction among students and faculty. The necessary improvement was made evident in the business case at the start of the project, with the key goals being fewer errors and changes in the schedule, and a smoother, better-managed process for creating the schedule. The realization of these goals was monitored during key milestones. Additionally, the achievement of these goals was assessed after each important step in the scheduling process to allow for immediate course correction.

Impact: The planned occupancy rate of the educational spaces has been increased to over 80% and higher. By maintaining a continuous focus on the key goals throughout the execution, both the improvements and remaining issues were made transparent to the main stakeholders: students and faculty. Calm has been restored to the scheduling process; panic has been eliminated. The realization that poor data input creates one’s own problems has permeated all levels of the organization and may have been the real breakthrough. The project team was consistently informed of the progress and the extent to which the mission was being achieved.