Abstract:

Qatar University (QU) is a medium size public university established in 1973 to be an autonomous institution. Though it was subjected to public sector rules, regulations and hiring system, QU has never stopped trying to be autonomous. The Reform Plan which was endorsed by the highest level of authority in the country in 2004 opened the way for QU to become autonomous and encouraged it to launch many major changes in its governance, management and systems. Immediately after the endorsement of the Reform Plan, QU began working on its own policies and procedures, followed by the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) management system and the student information management system. Implementing three ambitious projects in four years exposed QU to new experiences and yielded many learned lessons. This paper sheds lights on these experiences with greater focus on the approach and change management; other institutions may find that interesting and helpful. All projects were closed successfully and QU is reaping the fruits in terms of better management and services to customers and stakeholders. Educational institutions represent part of the mechanism and are drivers of change in any society; they sometimes get so involved in developing concepts of change and articulating venues to implement change in other environments that they fail to spend enough time doing so for their own organizations. It has been a common practice to induce change in educational institutions through board of regents or board of trustees; however, members of these boards may not have sufficient time and expertise in driving change, leaving it to the management to develop the vision and mechanism to initiate, plan, implement and manage change. Although change may require additional resources; the notion of change itself tends to introduce perception, expectations and reaction. Not all of these may, however, represent reality. This notion may extrapolate even further in professional institutions such as universities, hospitals and research centers. People associate change with loss of privileges, power or resources, making it very crucial to plan well for change; project management can successfully help this process.