CU Anschutz transformed IT operations with ClickUp

ISS was growing fast, but its tools weren’t keeping up. Teams relied on a variety of products to get work done. As a result, they spent hours manually consolidating reports and updates from different systems each week.

“We had a rotating system where someone was assigned weekly or monthly to pull data from Excel and SharePoint. It was all manual. We’re talking multiple tools, multiple logins—it wasted time,” said Ashley Arens, who leads a team of project managers under Information Strategy and Services’ Delivery Excellence group.

It became obvious that they needed more than hard work; they needed a system that could scale. The goal was ambitious: create a centralized IT project management office (PMO) that could handle project portfolio management, workforce management, and everything in between.

So when Information Strategy and Services launched a new PMO, the leadership team knew they needed more than a conventional project management tool. They wanted a flexible platform to orchestrate complex IT initiatives, which meant everything from server migrations to cross-campus equipment rollouts.

As Lindsay Massey, Director of ISS Delivery Excellence, put it, “We wanted a solution not just for project portfolio management but for the entire workforce—something aligned with our ITSM principles.”

“We were building from the ground up," said Ashley. “It was crucial for us to customize a solution that could grow along with our organizational maturity.”

With that goal in mind, they set out to find a solution that would do more than just manage projects; one that would lay the foundation for a more connected IT organization.

Lindsay and her team began a thorough requirements-gathering process. They were determined to find a system that could support both large-scale projects and day-to-day operations.

After carefully evaluating several tools, ClickUp emerged as the top choice due to its user-friendly design, dynamic dashboard reporting, and versatility.

ClickUp replaced five legacy systems, quickly becoming the backbone of project execution and operational support. Initially deployed to a 13-person pilot group, ClickUp expanded to 170+ team members across the organization.

“ClickUp replaced five legacy systems used for project management and reporting and gives us the dashboards and reporting we’ve needed. We can now manage project work, operational tasks, and team capacity—all in one place.”

ISS cut work sprawl and formed strategic partnerships

For Anna Alex, Director of Campus Technology Services, ClickUp became the linchpin for transforming her 19-person operational support team. Her department, responsible for classroom technology, AV systems, desktop support, and campus-wide tech services, had been juggling a patchwork of tools—Microsoft Teams for communication, Outlook and Excel for task assignments, SharePoint for internal reporting, and Confluence for documentation. Each week, a different team member was pulled away from their technical work to manually compile and synthesize information across systems.

ClickUp changed everything.

“We built our entire ClickUp environment in just three months, working closely with Jenny from the ClickUp team,” Anna shared. “She helped translate all of our legacy systems into a single, usable space. That alone freed up a huge amount of admin overhead.”

Now, instead of managing tasks across five or six platforms, Anna’s team handles their entire operational workflow—from weekly classroom tech checks to desktop support rotations—inside ClickUp. They’ve eliminated the need for rotating admin duties and significantly reduced time spent on manual updates. Technicians now get to focus on hands-on work rather than Excel sheets, and morale has improved as a result.

ClickUp’s customizable Dashboards also became critical to managing proactive support. For example, Anna’s team tracks weekly and monthly system checklists to ensure every classroom and device is tested and maintained on schedule. Dashboards help them visualize service health in real time and ensure no task slips through the cracks.

When the School of Dental Medicine approached them with a new initiative to launch a virtual reality lab, ClickUp became the central tool for planning and execution. Anna’s team used ClickUp to research equipment, benchmark solutions from other universities, and build out a maintenance and support model for the lab—all in one place.

“ClickUp lets us design support workflows around new technology before it's even deployed,” Anna said. “It’s made us more agile and more aligned with the pace of innovation at the Anschutz Medical Campus.”

From long-range strategic planning to daily device checks, ClickUp now powers the entire lifecycle of IT operations for Anna’s team.

Building a modern PMO

Meanwhile, Ashley’s Delivery Excellence group set up a structured PMO within ClickUp. ClickUp served as a single platform for critical PMO activities, such as planning, execution, task management, and cross-functional collaboration, without the need to manage multiple tools.

Enabling flexible frameworks

Information Strategy and Services operates under a mix of methodologies—waterfall, agile, and often a hybrid they call “wagile.” ClickUp’s adaptability lets them configure workflows, approvals, and accommodate different project styles with Custom Fields. This flexibility proved especially valuable for complex IT projects spanning multiple departments and technologies.

ClickUp’s Views (such as Lists, Boards, and Gantt charts) let them handle tasks using whichever methodology is most convenient. Its open structure empowered them to “start from zero” and adapt—essential for standing up a new PMO in an environment with mixed frameworks.

Building custom project templates

Because no out-of-the-box template fully satisfied the complex needs of their newly formed PMO, ISS focused on creating their own standardized guides, tasks, and templates in ClickUp. Over time, they refined these templates to streamline planning and consistently gather data across projects.

Leveraging reporting for visibility

One of the team’s biggest goals was showcasing their work throughout the university. By setting up consistent fields and structures within ClickUp, they are able to produce clearer reports and dashboards, making it easy to demonstrate the value they add and the efficiency they operate at.

“One of the biggest wins is the ability to track, measure, and show the value of our work,” Ashley explained. “We’ve got a lot of unstructured data, but ClickUp helps us cleanly aggregate it so we can prove the impact we make for the university.”

Driving organizational alignment

Teams use ClickUp to manage projects, track dependencies, and assess workloads across various teams, including network, identity management, and security. By regularly reviewing active tasks and upcoming deadlines in one place, the IT group can coordinate more effectively with leadership and stakeholders.

Information and Strategy Services successfully built (and continues to refine) its PMO using ClickUp as a flexible foundation.

As they continue refining workflows, introducing quarterly planning, and standardizing architectures, ClickUp remains central to showing leadership the clear value and impact of the IT PMO.

With a full-fledged PMO, ISS has redefined how they track, manage, and communicate their work. Manual, time-consuming reporting is a thing of the past.

“Dashboards became the real game-changer,” says Ashley. “If I need deeper context, I can just click right in. Before, we’d waste hours merging data, exporting spreadsheets—now it’s automatic. We love ClickUp for that flexibility.”

Anna saw the same effect on her operational side, “The team’s morale went up because people want to fix problems, not build pivot tables,” she said. “Now we have one solution for everything.”

With ClickUp, manual reporting is completely eliminated, allowing technicians and project managers to concentrate on strategic tasks. 170+ IT users across multiple departments have a consistent, adaptable framework for tackling everything from server migrations to proactive AV checks.

Looking ahead, ISS plans to expand into portfolio management within ClickUp and use robust dashboards to prove its return on investment, align with stakeholders, and advance strategic initiatives.

This story continues to unfold as the university strives to enhance collaboration, mature their processes, and deliver ever-greater value to faculty, staff, and students across both CU Anschutz and CU Denver campuses—all thanks to a PMO built on a single, flexible solution.