Case Study: University of Notre Dame achieves less risk and greater value with Planview Project Portfolio Management

Shifting from Big Bang Upgrades to Monthly Releases Means Less Risk and Greater Value

The University of Notre Dame, a private research university in Indiana with about 5,600 faculty and staff, faced a major change as it moved 80% of its applications to the cloud: transitioning from infrequent, resource‑intensive "big bang" upgrades to a monthly release cadence. With limited time and staff, the IT team was concerned that their traditional full regression testing approach wouldn’t be feasible and worried about the risk of more frequent updates.

Working with Planview’s Project Portfolio Management solution, Notre Dame adopted a monthly release process that updates a sandbox first, provides a week of targeted testing guided by advance release notes, and uses a risk‑based testing approach. The result: fewer large upgrades, faster fixes, up‑to‑date security and features, reduced workload for IT, and greater confidence in application integrity — a change the team now prefers over the old big‑bang model.

University of Notre Dame

Julie Pawlak

IT Lead Project Manager