Process Overview

A business process is simply a step-by-step way of getting something done in your department or office. It’s the set of activities people follow to complete a task—from start to finish. For example, approving a student’s travel request, onboarding a new hire, or ordering lab supplies are all business processes. 

Before we can help you with your request, we need to understand your current process clearly: 

• Who does what?
• When do they do it?
• What decisions are made?
• What information is passed along?

Having a well-documented business process helps ensure: 

• We're solving the right problem
• We're not automating an inefficient or outdated method
• Everyone involved understands and agrees on how things work (or should work)
• We can design an automation that truly improves the experience 

You may submit a Word document or a PDF with the process documented. The documentation can be written in narrative form or presented as a diagram.

When creating your business process, it may be helpful to think about what each step in your process accomplishes instead of what you do physically. What would you need to do to accomplish your business objective if there was no technology available to complete your process. For example, if you submit a request to a manager for approval, we want to know that the request needs to be approved by a manager—not necessarily that you draft and send an email.

Consider the following questions as you work on the process document:

• What information is needed for the approval?
• Who has the authority to approve?
• What regulation or policy states the requirement for the approval and who can approve? 

Executive Sponsor Role Description: The Project Executive Sponsor is a senior leader who provides strategic oversight, institutional support, and executive-level decision-making for a project. This role ensures that the project aligns with the University’s strategic priorities and has the necessary resources and leadership backing to succeed.

Role Criteria: Must be a Cabinet member or AVP with budget authority.

Responsibilities:

• Governance & Leadership:
  • Approves Project Charter.
  • Participates in the IT Steering Committee and Executive Sponsor briefings, strategy discussions, and negotiations related to the project.
  • Provides executive-level support for risk mitigation and issue resolution.
• Strategic Oversight:
  • Ensures the project aligns with KSU’s institutional goals and priorities.
• Resource Commitment:
  • Approves or secures financial resources and budget allocations.
  • Support staffing and resource needs across departments.
• Continuity & Sponsorship:
  • Maintains consistent sponsorship throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Appoint a successor if unable to continue in the role.
• Decision Authority:
  • Makes final decisions on strategic matters related to the project.
  • Empowers the Project Sponsor and business unit leads to act on behalf of the organization.
• Escalation Point:
  • Serves as the final escalation point for unresolved strategic issues or conflicts related to the project.

Project Sponsor Role Description: The Project Sponsor plays a critical leadership role in ensuring the success of a project. This individual is responsible for ensuring the project is aligned with KSU strategic goals; securing resources and facilitating decision-making for all business stakeholders; and maintaining active engagement throughout the project lifecycle.

Role Criteria: Must be in a management-type position or faculty and have authority to request budgetary funding for the project.

Responsibilities:

• Strategic Alignment:
  • Define business goals of the project and explain how they align with the University's strategic plan.
• Team Support:
  • Commit specific business area/academic area project team members to the project and ensure all business stakeholders fulfill their commitments to the project.
  • If allocated resources cross divisions or teams, the project sponsor will coordinate team member responsibilities with cross-departmental points of contact.
• Active Engagement:
  • Stay involved and attend all project meetings through the duration of the project.
• Communication:
  • Directly communicates with Executive Sponsor, department/division leadership, and all business stakeholders (Horizontal and Vertical communication).
• Data Governance:
  • Obtain proper data governance approvals, if needed.
• Project Ownership & Decision Leadership:
  • Obtain Executive Sponsor approval, co-approve project scope, drive timely decisions, and provide final signoff on project deliverables.
  • Accountable for all non-UITS assignments.
• Conflict & Change Management:
  • Facilitate process conflicts with business process owners.
  • Champion organizational change and gain buy-in.
• Objectives & Success Metrics:
  • Set project objectives (define what the project end state will look like at a high-level).
  • Define and track meaningful success metrics.
• Scope Creation & Change Evaluation:
  • Collaborate with Technical and Business Stakeholders to determine project scope (what will be completed, why it will be completed, and how we will know when the project is done).
  • Approve high-level business requirements before project development starts.
  • Assess impact of project change requests (additional requirements) and provide business approval of scope change.

Business Process Owner Role Description: The Business Process Owner (BPO) is responsible for the end-to-end oversight, design, and implementation of a specific business process as it relates to the design, planning, and execution of a project. This role ensures that any changes to the business process related to the project are aligned with organizational goals, comply with relevant policies, and support the achievement of business objectives.

Role Criteria: Must be a full-time employee with deep knowledge of the relevant business process and its intersections with other departmental processes and other business process owners. Holds decision-making authority for process changes or has access and influence to engage department leadership in a timely manner regarding approval of process changes.

Responsibilities:

• Process Design & Optimization:
  • Describe and explain current operational business processes, including business rules, pain points, time requirements, common errors, staffing needs, evaluation metrics, and tools used.
  • Lead business process redesign efforts proposed by the project to improve efficiency and effectiveness, meet compliance needs, or support optimization goals, and document expected impacts of proposed process or technology changes.
• Compliance:
  • Ensure all processes adhere to University, USG, and other applicable policies, internal or departmental guidelines, and regulations.
• Team Support:
  • Identifying all stakeholders that will need to be trained to effectively manage and execute the new process.
  • Ensuring all stakeholders have the necessary knowledge, skills, and ability to manage the process.
• Active Engagement:
  • Actively participate in all project meetings and contribute subject matter expertise regarding business processes.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams and departments where business processes or operations intersect.
  • Serve as the primary contact for questions or coordination for business processes.
• Scope and Requirements Definition:
  • Participates in the development of business requirements (list of things, general or specific, that the product must be able to do to meet operational needs).
  • Works closely with the Project Sponsor and Business Process Owners to ensure that operational requirements are accurately reflected in the project scope—what will be delivered, why it matters, and how success will be measured.
  • Must use strategic thinking and have a strong understanding of business goals to ensure alignment between project deliverables and operational outcomes.
• Testing:
  • Creates test plans related to business processes.
  • Participates in functional testing (making sure the product works)- adhering to a formalized testing plan.
  • Provides timely feedback and report issues found using the prescribed method.
  • Provides approval that functional requirements have been met.
  • Work with project leadership to validate participants and appropriate user roles.
• Documentation & Standards:
  • Provide and maintain comprehensive process documentation, including process maps, SOPs, work instructions, support materials, and defined roles and responsibilities.
• Monitoring & Evaluation:
  • Define meaningful metrics to assess process performance and related data necessary for effective measures.
  • Gather and analyze baseline and post-change data to evaluate process changes and inform future technology requests.

You can expect additional process updates over the coming months as we put formal IT governance in place. We will keep you informed through the Weekly Feed and will directly contact requesters whose projects move to the backlog. 

Our goal is to undertake as many projects as possible but also be realistic about the timelines and our ability to complete work as promised and without impacting other demands. We will also update this page with guidance on submitting new requests.