Lessons Learned

1. Planning sessions require a set agenda, otherwise participants can digress into other areas that are only tangentially related.
2. When the focus is academic technology, the planning team can easily be tempted to discuss technology in a more global sense. Keeping the task at hand is central.
3. Buy-in is a critical element. Who should be on the planning team and a process for adoption of the plan need to be worked out.
4. Planning projects must be conceptualized within a fiscal context. There should be no unfunded mandates.
5. A concentrated time frame can energize participants to have an "action" approach. It creates "light at the end of the tunnel," a good tactical planning process has finite parameters and produces a meaningful product.