As of May 2014 the DU-IT (the IT service provider of the municipality of Duisburg and the DVV group) and the SITM chair have collaborated on a joint project. The project was set up to improve the management and steering of IT demands. This is a term commonly used to describe business’s demands concerning project proposals in need of IT support that the IT department needs to provide. Managing these IT demands poses a challenge, as the DU-IT’s IT landscape is very heterogeneous, although carrying out the core business tasks is essential. DU-IT is required to deliver tailored IT solutions to manifold customers from various areas, for example, the energy sector, service providers, utility companies and many more with difficult demands for the IT organization. On June 27, 2014, a first workshop of a longer series was conducted, in which more than 20 employees of DU-IT’s top management team, as well as representatives of their respective customers, participated. The prime outcome of the workshop was a holistic demand management process model with clear milestones, which covers the entire demand lifecycle from the discussion of the customers’ demand to the final realization of a beneficial IT solution. Based on the developed model, the demand management process will be implemented at DU-IT to optimize the interface between the IT organization and its customers, thus establishing an efficient management of all IT demands. This project is a successful example of cooperation between a company and a local university, in which novel academic insights have been transferred to practice. The applied IT demand management framework was initially developed in cooperation with an international company but has been tailored to meet DU-IT’s specific needs.