"After years and years of trying to get IT involved from the inception, we finally succeeded," says Caddell. And this in turn has made IT more effective. "For a change, we were able to understand what the objectives were from the very start and make suggestions on ways we could help," says Charlotte Logullo, an internal IT consultant who's still involved in all Client Share meetings, setting business strategy and not just IT plans. For Vince Kellen, who took over as CIO at DePaul University almost five years ago (he is now VP of IS), transforming IT meant setting technology aside for a while.

"IT had just installed an ERP system at a lot of cost," says Kellen. "It was perceived as a black hole of money."

The malady, Kellen knew, was the lack of a comprehensive IT strategy and an architecture to support it; the cure would be a service-oriented architecture (SOA). But Kellen needed time to make his case and time to build the SOA (for information about building a business case for an SOA, see How to Get the Most from SOA). "Change begins with talking," says Kellen. "You have to talk. And keep talking. And keep talking."

Kellen's biggest problem was the guy who hired him. His method for managing his demanding and results-hungry boss? "I kept my list of goals in one pocket and my resignation letter in the other," says Kellen. The SOA took three years to complete (the first two were spent building a proper organizational structure, assembling a management team and laying the philosophical groundwork for the change) and won a CIO 100 award.

"You have to carve out that window of time where the executives leave you alone to get this done," says Kellen.