Project Management for IR & IE Leaders:
Navigating Governance, Morale, and Multi-Year Data Plans

00:38Thank you for joining me today for another episode of Data Stakes, where I have conversations with professionals who work directly in the institutional research or effectiveness field, or are data-adjacent in their role in higher education. Today's conversation will focus on what IR or IE professionals need when leading a multi-year or multi-team data strategy — and that is project management skills.

My guests today are two project management professionals, Melissa Kaiza and Wendy Malinowski. Mel's IT career spans more than 25 years, including over 15 years managing projects in nonprofit, healthcare, and now higher education. She has served as a director of IT, helped build an IT PMO from the ground up, taught technology courses as an adjunct, and trained hundreds of employees in cybersecurity awareness. Today, she is the IT project manager at Harford Community College in Maryland.

Wendy Malinowski, PMP, CSPO, is a project management and operational executive with more than two decades of experience building delivery organizations, establishing PMO frameworks, and leading cross-functional teams through complex, large-scale transformations. Currently serving as the Vice President of Customer Solutions at Datatelligent, Wendy owns the end-to-end customer lifecycle and oversees the delivery of data and analytics solutions at the intersection of AI-enabled development and operational excellence. She has built PMOs from the ground up, led enterprise-scale programs across Fortune 500 and high-growth organizations, and consistently translated strategic vision into repeatable, measurable delivery systems. A Purdue University electrical engineer by training, she brings a technical foundation to every operational challenge she leads.

All right, Mel and Wendy, thank you for joining me for an episode of Data Stakes. Now, some of our listeners might wonder what project management has to do with data work — unless, of course, they've been part of a project that stalled out, ended with damaged professional relationships, or was completed but didn't meet the metrics for success. You both have a much longer background in the business world, so let's start by sharing what makes project management in higher education settings different.

03:10The biggest difference is how decisions are made. Higher education has a wonderful, rich culture of democracy — of including everyone — and I would never want to lose that. But there's a difference between getting input from everyone and making the decision. When those two things get blurred, you end up with analysis paralysis. Every meeting ends with, "Let's get a little more information," or "Next meeting we'll invite so-and-so." Weeks and months go by without a decision. Nobody is doing anything wrong — everyone wants to get it just right. This is why governance matters so much. Project management in higher education only works as well as the governance behind it: data owners, agreed definitions, and a small steering committee with the authority to decide and the authority to protect those decisions. Consensus is great input, but a terrible deadline.

04:01Yes, I get that. We do like to talk around a subject in higher education, and we tend to drag projects out much longer than we need to. And yes, everybody wants to be involved. What about you, Wendy?

04:15Well, I couldn't agree more. Sometimes there's that fear of, "Well, if Bob doesn't agree with it, I'm going to be in trouble." You don't want to be the bad guy. A lot of times it's more personal than all of that, too — "I don't want to be the bad guy. I want to make sure Bob feels good about this. What if he doesn't like it?" And so the analysis can get really crazy. A lot of times we don't want to upset anybody, and that stalls the project very quickly.

04:49Right, absolutely. And one thing to remember is that when you're managing a project, you're managing change — and change makes people very uncomfortable. That's another thing to throw in: what I'll call the emotional feedback loop you can get when you're working with colleagues in higher education. So trust in leadership is integral to any project. How can the project manager quickly establish trust with a team?

05:22I think transparency, candor, and follow-through. Transparency means making it clear from day one who decides what — some of that governance we talked about helps. Candor means no surprises; the PMs should be able to speak frankly about risks and roadblocks on the project. That's really important. And then follow-through: do what you say you're going to do.

05:48Absolutely. Mel, just to clarify, have you found a difference when you're leading a project and there's an executive administrator involved, versus someone a little lower in the hierarchy? Do they have different expectations that you meet differently?

06:08I would say yes. When there's somebody higher up — an executive — on the project, it's a little bit harder to manage. They really only want the high-level answers. They don't want to get in the weeds, and they don't want to be in every single meeting. Whereas the people in the weeds want information constantly about what's going on.

06:34Yeah, you're right — it's different forms of communication. Wendy?

06:37Yeah, you definitely need to understand your key stakeholders and meet them where they're at. Whether it's that high-level overview — just tell me, are you on track or not? Is this going to cost me money? Am I going to be embarrassed in front of my peers? — or "Hey, did that query run and finish last night?" depending on what it is. On trust, I agree with what Mel said about how you gain trust with the team: be who you say you are, and follow through. Be transparent, be honest. I always seem to get people behind me by just being real. So if something is broken, or I caused something — because we're not perfect — own it and then move on. And at the same time, hold people accountable and responsible the same way you're holding yourself.

07:26Right. And delivery is key — delivering what you said you would do. And if something comes up, which it almost always does, that's where the honesty comes in. I think it's also important to have a response to that delay, so the team recognizes that you have things well in hand.

07:49Yep, follow-ups are important — that's the communication piece you just mentioned.

07:54One communication piece I've introduced on some of our larger projects is a communication site where everyone gets the same information, and it's kept updated. I put it at the bottom of all of my emails so people can click on it — every communication that goes out says, go to this site for the most current information. We usually have definitions on there, updates, timelines. I think that's really helpful so that everyone's getting the same message, because "telephone" is a real problem, right? Someone said this, and someone else heard that. If you just keep pointing people to one source of information, I think that's important.

08:33Absolutely — a single source of truth, if you will. Here are the updates.

08:38Right. Mel, do you have a preferred method for that? Is there a platform or software you prefer, or do you use some of the tools that are traditionally available in higher ed?

08:53We're using SharePoint right now — just a SharePoint site. It's like any regular website, so anybody can click on it and it brings you right there, with all the information, and you can update it every day if you need to. So use whatever tools you have available to you, but it should be something easy. They click on it and everything's right there.

09:18Yeah, that is true. It's the rules we abide by with websites — it needs to be just one click, not three or four clicks deep. I also find it's helpful if you're able to ping people and let them know there's a new document, or something we need them to look at, with a link so they don't have to go hunt for it in the site.

So, multi-year plans — let's talk about those, because they can run out of steam. It's really hard to keep people motivated and keep them going; it's like running a marathon. You're really excited when you go out the gate, you've got all that adrenaline, and then about 12 miles in, you're thinking, the finish line is never going to get here. So how can the project manager motivate teams for longer projects?

10:09There are probably a ton of ways you can answer this, and Wendy might have some other ideas, but one thing I wanted to focus on is reducing fatigue — protecting the work from constant restarts. That is really frustrating. On long projects, change requests and leadership turnover, which we see a lot, can quickly restart a project. So again, it goes back to the steering committee — with change control, maybe some formal sign-off, and a decision log to keep the project steady. That way, if we do get new leaders, they're briefed from the original record. We don't have to start over; there's information on why we made each decision. Because the people may change, but the decisions don't have to change every time the people do.

10:58They definitely can, though — you can't eliminate all of it. But I agree with having some form of documentation. Otherwise you're more prone to restarting, because all you have is wherever you're at in the moment. You don't have that history, and new people don't have the context when they come in. That makes it really hard. And sometimes baking cookies helps, if it's the immediate team on the day-to-day — or "All right, I'm going to send you a gift card," not a big one, just for lunch or whatever. Hey, we've got to keep going. Little ways to motivate the team.

11:42Right. And I think it's also important for your team to understand the difference between change and disruption. Disruption is a stop; change is managed iteratively. But you're right — when you have leadership changes, especially at the executive level, sometimes work can grind to a complete stop. And when it starts up again, it can look very different. Your team needs to understand that ultimately it pushes your deadline out. It doesn't make it faster; it might actually make it longer.

12:20Or not at all, depending on what it is — because now it's, "Wait a minute, I didn't agree to this. Let me look at it." And they need to take their time, of course, coming into a new situation, so you have to be respectful of that. But at the same time, that stoppage does impact the team significantly.

12:44Well, let's move into a topic we didn't talk about earlier: how that impacts morale — and how morale then impacts who's willing to participate. I was in the middle of a strategic plan at a former school when we had a very significant change, and the entire work on the strategic plan was scrapped. This was more than ten years ago, and I lost 95 percent of my campus stakeholders. And I really didn't blame them. So morale is really strongly tied to project completion.

13:25It's hard to get buy-in when those changes happen and people say, "We already did the work, and now we have to start over." Or sometimes, in some of the later iterations, they're not included in the decision, and they're like, "Well, I wasn't asked this time." It does become very frustrating for them, and it can really sour the project. So I feel like having some kind of record — here's where the line is, here are the decisions we made, here's the sign-off — gives it a little more weight than a conversation where nobody remembers who said what and when.

14:03Or it's just the project manager reiterating everything because they lived it, they know what the decisions were, and they wrote it down — but nobody else seems to remember, and it was never documented properly. That's where you get into trouble, and then it's just the world according to Mel or Wendy. That's never a good situation.

14:21Right. So we've talked about the fact that multiple groups are often involved due to shared governance. And one consequence, Mel, that you referred to at the very beginning was competing priorities — or even just an overall lack of ownership by participants or teams. How can you handle that effectively?

14:48Lack of ownership isn't about people not caring. Sometimes it comes down to not knowing if they're empowered to make the decision, or not knowing who is supposed to be making decisions. And with competing priorities, they may not know if they're the lead on this project, or who the technical lead is. So making those things very clear to everybody on the project is important. And then, instead of saying, "Let's discuss this," say, "Let's decide by Friday" — or not even "let's decide," but "So-and-so is going to make this decision by Friday." Make that clear so that person now has ownership. They know when they leave that meeting that it's on them to get that piece of information. Because sometimes people leave meetings thinking everyone else is going to do it — just like when somebody says, "Call 911," everyone thinks someone else is going to do it, and they all go their merry way.

15:47Yeah, I agree with Mel. Priorities are always a sticking point between departments. You leave it up to the individual and hope they can manage their own priorities, but oftentimes you have to bubble it up to their management. And that goes back to the theme of communication: "I need Bob for this particular week, and I need this and that — how can we make this work if he says he can't do it in time?" So to keep things moving, you do a lot of negotiating. I was going to say manipulating, but that's not right. Negotiating — and begging.

16:28Bribing with donuts.

16:31I was going to say that! Maybe it's just after lunch here and I'm still hungry. But yes — the baking of cookies, whatever it takes. How do I get you in this car today? Project management is a lot of negotiation and collaboration, and trying to get everybody to the same goal at the same time, hopefully.

16:54One thing we did try to do is implement a portfolio type of management, where we rank each project in terms of its priority to the organization. It's not as widely adopted as I would like, but at least internally in the IT department we try to do that, so people know — if you've got five tickets and requests, which one is really due today? Which one's the most critical? Then they can manage that. I know for myself, if I've got five things that need my attention and I don't know what the priorities are, I don't know which one to do — and then I may not do anything. So making that clear is important as well.

17:35So, have either of you had to be the bad guy on a project? Ha — you're smiling, Mel. Come on.

17:44I'm always the bad guy.

17:45What does that mean, Debbie — a bad guy?

17:48I'm not asking Wendy.

17:49I notice she didn't ask you, Mel — she knows the answer to that one.

17:55Nobody really wants to be the bad guy, but that's part of managing a project. It's knowing when to use the carrot — we've already mentioned the donuts, or the lunch card — but sometimes you have to use the stick. So how do you manage when you have to be the bad guy, when you have to prod somebody? What do you do?

18:19I'm more of a carrot kind of person almost all the time, until there's a point where it's a true risk — where I know I'm going to get in trouble because people will ask why I didn't do something more about it. Then I may need to use a stick. I'm not above nagging — just reminding people constantly, asking what they need help with, that kind of thing. But when it comes to the stick, a lot of times that means escalating things: "Okay, I don't want to have to bring this up, but this is where the project is, and now we're at risk for X, Y, and Z if this doesn't get done." Sometimes that means including other people, like executives elsewhere. That tends to get people moving. If an executive from another functional area that wants something done is on the email saying, "We're still delayed because this hasn't gotten done yet" — it's amazing, but it gets done soon after.

19:20Yes. Now, I would never say any of my former colleagues have ever said I nagged. However, I do have a custom tumbler in my kitchen cabinet that says, "Let me be, Debbie, let me be."

19:40There you go. Well, sometimes the people you escalate about — say, poor Bob, whoever Bob is — say he can't get something done. He's been dragging his feet, or he's got conflicting priorities we don't know about as project managers, because even though people are supposed to be transparent and let us know, they're often still managing it on their own. But I've often found that Bob wants me to escalate, because then it makes things very clear: A or B — what are you doing? However many priorities Bob has, escalating asks, how important is this? This was priority project number three, and Bob's working on five and six. Maybe three moved — you don't know. So again, it goes back to communication. Sometimes they want, or appreciate, the escalation. You're not always the bad guy. It may feel that way, but sometimes they just want you to clarify those priorities along the way.

20:43So what I'm hearing from both of you is that successful project management starts with having a plan ahead of time. You may not know exactly — you may not even know who will be part of the team yet — but you can still have a plan, especially for how you'll communicate, how you'll hold people accountable, how you'll manage deadlines, and any platforms you're using. You can't start that when the project starts; you have to have it beforehand and be ready. And of course, I agree with Wendy: walking into the first meeting with a box of donuts has always worked for me.

But let's talk about something that's been really popular on other podcasts — you knew we were going to talk about artificial intelligence. Before we end, I'd like both of you to share how you're integrating AI into your current project management strategies. Whoever wants to go first, take it away.

21:45You want to go first, Wendy? Okay.

21:47Sure, why not? There are a couple of ways. At Datatelligent, we use a tool for our project management forecasting that has AI insights built in. When a developer gives an estimate of, say, five hours for a task, it will also look for similar tasks and give us an idea of how long things actually take. Of course, that's only as good as the input we give it — if we name things differently, AI gets confused and thinks they're all unique. So we're trying that out. What we've found to be fairly successful on the project management logistics side is an AI note-taker that comes to most of our meetings. It's fairly good, but we also run the output through Claude with a template to produce summaries, agendas, and other things. So we're using AI for notes, agendas, and insights across meetings over a time frame — to see if there are any trends or things to watch out for. It's been pretty successful so far. It's not perfect, but it's been pretty good. And the feedback I'm getting from the team is, "Wow, did you take all that time to write that?" And I said, heck no — I'm trying it out. And they said, well, it's pretty good. So it's promising. Mel, how about you?

23:09Same — though I'm not as sophisticated. I haven't given Claude a template. But I will feed it transcripts from a note-taker. It's a little more difficult when it's a vendor meeting sometimes. I use Read AI, which sometimes joins the meetings, and sometimes there are other methods. However I get hold of the transcripts, I'll put them into AI and at least get the summary and action items. And I'm careful about what I put into AI, and careful with what comes out. I always read it and go through it, because it's right most of the time, but sometimes some things are off. I don't have anything automated yet, or any templates fed into it.

23:58Yeah, but it is helpful.

24:00Absolutely. It saves a lot of time. There's no way, with these back-to-back meetings and going project to project to project, that I'd be able to produce these summaries and action items for days. And we really need them right after the meeting, because people need to know what they need to do. You may only have their attention for an hour that day, and then they're on to something else. By the next day they've forgotten it — they don't remember what the meeting said.

24:25Exactly. And even the technical team appreciates it for technical reviews — a snapshot in time. Recording the meeting and having those notes helps, because a lot of times they're sharing their screen and explaining a solution, and they're not taking notes. If I missed it, or didn't catch what that table was called, the note-taker did. So it's always helpful.

24:50Right. This has been such great advice, especially for IR or IE professionals who have assumed a wider scope or a larger role at their institution. Moving from a member of the team to leading a team can be intimidating. So again, thank you for sharing your valuable insights — I greatly appreciate the time you spent with me today.

To our listeners, thank you for joining us for another episode of Data Stakes. Data Stakes is sponsored by the Data Analytics Alliance for Higher Education, and you can visit our website to learn more about our upcoming quarterly meeting. If you have any questions about today's conversation, don't hesitate to reach out to me at dephelps@datatelligent.ai.