MTech Communities of Practice

MTech Communities of Practice are how we stay aligned across a big university. They give U-M staff and faculty doing similar work a consistent place to compare approaches, share what’s working (and what isn’t), and avoid solving the same problems in parallel.

CoPs don’t set policy or make decisions for others. Rather, they strengthen MTech by building relationships, spreading practical know-how, and improving how we deliver reliable, usable services for the university. If you want to learn, contribute, or just connect with peers who do what you do—or are trying to—participating in CoP is one of the easiest ways to do so.

Expand All CoPs

Newest CoPs

  • Vibe Coding
    A group focused on a new software development approach where individuals, often non-technical, use natural language prompts to instruct AI agents to build applications, bypassing manual code writing.

Collaboration & Community

TL;DR: Align practices, share what works, build cross-unit relationships

A place to talk through the people-and-process side of tech at U‑M: how we collaborate across teams, support users, and share approaches for university-wide tools and communication.

  • Collaboration and productivity services are widely used and critically important across the university community. This Community of Practice (COP) will discuss, educate and inform about such services; collect and offer examples of their use, and work to elevate collaboration and productivity at the University of Michigan.
  • This community for facilitators was established in order to share resources, challenges, tips, support and tools among Michigan IT Community of Practice facilitators.
  • This community is for those interested in being involved, or just monitoring, work being done with CRM systems and projects across the university.
  • The U-M Videoconferencing Group includes professional staff who provide video and videoconferencing services in units at the university. The group is focused primarily on videoconference room systems and interoperability.
  • This community seeks to establish a network of people in the field of Information Technology to support career growth for everyone with an interest in Information Technology: this includes exploring education on relevant topics, and ways to support activity in IT by people with the widest possible variety of backgrounds of those who have the drive to work in IT, including women in IT.

Data & Analytics

TL;DR: Improve data practices, share reusable methods, turn data into decisions

For those who work with data end-to-end by collecting, managing, governing, analyzing, reporting, and preserving – where emphasis is on practical methods that can be applied in your own unit.

  • This group builds and grows U-M’s analytics community through networking, information sharing, and skill development related to analytics, reporting, and business intelligence at the University of Michigan.
  • This group is about all things data, including data integration, storage, analysis, AI and more. We focus on identifying best practices through collaboration with our members. This is a member-driven CoP and we encourage everyone to share their experiences, techniques, and discoveries with the practice for the benefit of all.
  • This CoP will allow data stewards, delegated data stewards and data managers to share experiences, updates, tools & resources, hold training sessions and provide ongoing support for data activities.
  • Digital Asset Collaborative Community of Practice covers topics related to Digital Asset Management (DAM) practices such as curation, digital asset lifecycle, metadata, and governance.
  • This community provides a venue for members of the campus community to share information, experiences, and ideas around GIS topics.
  • The GLAM-IT Community of Practice brings together creators, users, and managers of data and digital assets from U-M galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) to advance the mission of the University of Michigan.
  • This community facilitates sharing information and challenges around data, storage hardware, access management, and networking to help understand how we do what we do, where we can improve individually and collectively, and strengthen existing relationships to support and learn from each other.
  • This group collaborates by sharing information about data collection, querying, analysis, reporting, and other applied research efforts that support strategic planning and decision making at the unit and institution level.

Emerging Tech

TL;DR: Compare pilots, reduce risk, learn faster together

For those evaluating or piloting new tech. Bring what you’re trying, what you’re curious about, and the questions you don’t want to answer alone, and engage with others doing the same.

  • Exploring AI Projects, Ideas, and Challenges Together
  • The purpose of this community is to explore and learn from each other on the various uses of Augmented and Virtual Reality systems. The group will track the emergent uses of these technologies and share individual experiences with the different platforms.
  • This community is intended for those interested in the use of cloud-based systems, either as infrastructure (e.g., servers, networks in the cloud) or as services (e.g., pre-built web services).
  • Facilitate communication among campus groups that are using containers. Provide input to container service providers of user needs.
  • MDEN is a collaborative problem-solving network that shares code, tools and documentation for working with mobile technologies in research.
  • A group focused on a new software development approach where individuals, often non-technical, use natural language prompts to instruct AI agents to build applications, bypassing manual code writing.
  • The purpose of this community is to explore and learn from each other on the various uses of XR systems.

Leadership & Delivery

TL;DR: Plan and deliver better, align stakeholders, grow delivery/leadership skills

For those who turn goals into outcomes by planning work, aligning stakeholders, improving delivery, and building the skills that keep projects moving.

  • The purpose of this group is to connect people who have an interest in Business Analysis. Discussion topics include requirements, tools, processes, testing, training, retrospective and networking opportunities.
  • The purpose of this group is to connect people who have an interest in project management and program management. Discussion topics include tools, process, lessons learned and networking opportunities.
  • This working group provides a collaborative environment for those across the U-M Technology community (Academic and Medical campuses) interested in leadership development, skill advancement, and next practices.

Learning & Access

TL;DR: Improve learning impact, increase accessibility, share effective inclusive practices

For teams supporting teaching and learning, and for anyone trying to make U‑M’s digital experiences more inclusive, effective, and measurable.

  • This community connects members of the U-M community who are engaged in assessment or evaluation work focused on teaching and learning outcomes and foster collaboration across units and disciplinary domains.
  • This group exists to share resources, information, and ideas about how to address digital accessibility on campus.
  • Sharing information for best practices in the ever changing realm of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Marketing (SEM).
  • This community connects faculty and staff from U-M with those at partner institutions in other countries to assist in the design of technical and pedagogical solutions that enable regular classes to be co-taught between institutions. Faculty, instructional design, and A/V-IT support staff will find resources, training, and mentorship within the group that will assist them in creating and supporting these rich engaging learning experiences, where students gain valuable global experiences within their regular for-credit courses.

Ops & Engineering

TL;DR: Swap implementation details, strengthen reliability, reduce operational toil

For those who build and run services to share implementation details, operational habits, and lessons learned that make systems more reliable.

  • This community brings together individuals responsible for audiovisual technology.
  • This community is for developers, admins, operators, and others who use DevOps practices or are interested in learning more.