Abstract
The UM Information Technology Division (ITD) began an experiment in partnering with the College of Literature, Science, and Arts in 1991. This year, the lessons learned in that experiment are being applied as we expand the partnership concept to include the other schools and colleges. The purpose of the partnerships is to harness the critical expertise and resources of ITD to meet academic unit priorities. There are four major goals: advance the academic priorities of the units; create a continuing relationship; increase the information technology capabilities of the University; and insure that ITD products and resources support the needs of the units. While ITD benefits in many ways from these partnerships, the major benefit comes from our increased understanding of our academic customers and in our resulting ability to create "whole products" which the schools and colleges will choose to use. Four new partnerships provide case studies for the creation of these whole products. Paper presented at CAUSE94, the full proceedings of which are available through this Library as PUB1094.