How does an “invisible” technical upgrade become a university-wide change and communications exercise?

This session explores our real-world journey migrating from ADFS to Microsoft Entra ID Single Sign-On (SS0). At the point where most technical uplift was complete, the final stage involving students presented the greatest risks for change and user impact.

Presented from a dual perspective, the Identity Lead and Change Manager will share how identity architecture, user behaviour, and organisational readiness converged in this crucial phase. Technically, we’ll explain the change at a high-level, how we improved security and reduced reliance on legacy systems.

From a change perspective, we’ll cover two key phases of this program, staff and students, focusing chiefly on the complex student phase, where multiple support teams, and diverse student cohorts (inclusive of their own unique student processes), were all required to respond to the same moment of change.

This challenging ecosystem negated standard cutover planning and meant risk mitigation required more than coordination; it demanded a shared understanding of how support capacity, student experience, and institutional impacts interconnect at scale, leaving no room for assumptions.

The session offers a lightweight practical framework for co‑leading technical and change work with credibility, helping teams reduce friction, protecting stakeholder trust, while delivering effective technical change on time.

Learning outcomes

• Manage high‑impact IAM changes that appear technically “low touch”
• Co‑lead programs across technical and change disciplines
• Treat identity/technology initiatives as people projects while meeting project milestones
• Understand and manage multi-stakeholder user impact