Scenario Planning for the JISC JOS Committee Considering future staff roles, relationships and skills

This project delivered the full Scenario Planning process, speculating on the longer term implications of changes in staff working practices resulting from technological change, and reflecting on the type of organisational structure and roles that might be required to support new ways of working in the future.

Four new scenarios were created for future Higher Education institutions, based on current day trends regarding changing roles, responsibilities and working practices. Named Boutique University, My-U, Mega-U and Scholarly Towers, introductory narrative was created and these new scenarios were tested and interrogated by participants on three workshops.

The project was JISC-funded and contributed to the JISC JOS Committee programme regarding Changing staff roles, relationships and skills. It was the second Scenario Planning project Netskills has delivered for JISC, following on from the 2007-08 project for the JISC Users & Innovation programme. Both projects demonstrated that Scenario Planning is a valuable tool for strategic planning and, though the delivery of these projects, Netskills has developed knowledge, facilitation stills and workshop structures for practical application of the Scenario Planning process, either in its entirety or component parts.

This project concluded that Scenario Planning is a methodology worthy of continued attention within the education sector and outlined a number of recommendations for future work, including the refinement of the developed scenarios and regarding further focussed application of the full Scenario Planning process.

Further Information

To find out more about this project, including details of the four new scenarios, read the project's final report.

If you have any enquiries regarding Netskills' work on Scenario Planning please email enquiries@netskills.ac.uk or phone 0191 222 5000.