Slop University's Strategic Plan 2026-2031 commits every future rollout above a modest scale to a built-in comparison, after an uneven firmware update to residential kitchen fridges produced one by accident.
An accidental comparison in residential kitchens behind a firmware update becomes the model for the University's new Strategic Plan
Slop University’s newest Strategic Plan sets an operating rule for how the institution will know, from 2026, whether any of its own changes actually worked. The Plan, published today, commits every significant deployment across the University’s estate, technology, and services to carrying a comparison from the outset — a standard Council says brings the University’s own decision-making up to the level it already expects of published research.
A rollout that reaches everyone at once has told you it happened. It has not told you what it did.
— Dr Mirela Hanke, Postdoctoral Fellow and Deputy Convenor, Living Dashboard
The Plan’s central commitment traces back to an ordinary domestic accident: a firmware update reaching one side of a University-managed apartment block’s kitchen fridges six days ahead of the other, producing exactly the kind of comparison the Adaptive Metrics Lab says the institution should be building on purpose rather than discovering by chance. The School of Continuous Improvement is treating the case as the clearest illustration yet of a pattern it now expects to find in almost every rollout the University runs.
“An accident like that one is easy to file away as a curiosity,” said Doctoral Candidate Sunniva Balogun, who contributed to the Plan’s drafting consultation. “The Plan is what happens when the University decides to stop filing it away.”
The full Strategic Plan is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.dv6k5g.