[137] in I/T Delivery
2/27/98 Delivery Team Leaders Meeting Minutes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey On the Road)
Fri Feb 27 12:41:25 1998
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 98 12:15:12 EST
From: wdc@MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey On the Road)
To: delivery@MIT.EDU
0. Next Meeting is 27 March in N42-286 (Same room as this time.)
1. Discovery "Short Form" Process
Issues
Scope Creep
Use to show resouce consumption
Where question live
on the Delivery Web page
Standsrds for Discovery life cycle
Project life cycle document should point to Discovery questions
Not Requirements -- just guidelines
Are the questions complete?
No! just beginning. This is *Work in Progress**
Who needs visibility to completed answers?
Greg Anderson at a minimum. It helps us to determine project
priorities.
Is this an approval process?
More of a "quality review". This needs more discussion.
Do we lose time doing this?
We need to be clear with customer that business issues need to be
uncovered (i.e. it is worth the time.)
Can we add questions as appropriate?
YES! Ask what makes sense to get good information.
Is this cast in stone?
No. Let's try it and see if it works -- then decide to continue o
not with the short form.
Do these questions apply to every situation?
Maybe not.
Can we review/destruct this periodically?
Yes. especially on the web.
Author should be clear to do this. (Greg is the author.)
If the form points to a larger effort needed, then what?
Discover will engage the larger discussion with the customer.
----
2. Discussion of Project Priorities
Gems:
Assigning priorities is not about reporting a number, it is about having
a conversation.
It must not be mechanically applied. And assigning a numeric value
might have led some to think the exercise was more mechanical than
it was intended.
Need to clarify some of the definitions in the model that was proposed
for assigning priorities. i.e. What do we mutually agree is "Business
Value".
Ted suggested that there were two, not three axes: cost vs short term
value vs long term value.
Bottom line: Let's have conversations about priorities, and use some of
the ideas about cost, business value, and strategic value to help the
dialog. It's particularly useful to try and find projects that we can
agree to stop work on, and to get insights into how to resolve resource
conflicts.
----
3. SAP Phase 2 Planning Update.
----
4. Status/Announcements
Hiring Status
Dan Fitzgerald has joined IS to work on Physical Plant/SAP stuff.
Thomas Bushnell has been hired by Team Athena.
Other progress on lining up either contractors or warm bodies to
work in various areas.
Current Performance Appraisal process
Now officially started.
Project DB
There are many entries that have not been updated in a while.
People should PLEASE review their projects.
ITLT update
N42/E40 move reactions
The move seems to have come off better than expected.
There is an issue of parking -- getting some help when parking
near N42 for meetings.
----
5. Roundtable
Rocklyn: Work on SAP Web Requisitioning piece going well. Hope to have
something to demo by Wednesday of next week. Then NECX interface work
will begin. Work on Internet Transaction Server on home while
requisitioning work proceeds.
Teresa Regan: EPS: Prototyping build that will be deployed in March.
Tough issues related to EDI, and Digital Signatures are still out there.
Still on track for a July roll-out.
Lorraine: NECX/ECAT EDI work progressing nicely. We have selected
Harbinger with Templar as the EDI vendor/system. Scheduled training for
week of March 23. Piloted a new QuickStart class for ECAT on the web.
Bill Cattey: Sun and SGI work has intesified.
The library work has met an important milestone: Services previously
served out of offices in tech square cut over to using Origen in W91.
Larry Dean: The IXOS system required redoing the business processes of
the customer. When IXOS was put online for real testing, it was
discovered that much higher staffing was required, instead of the
hoped-for personnel savings. (Primarily in the activities of taking
paper documents, preparing them, and scanning them.) IXOS work scope is
under review.
Paul Hill: License has been signed for Calendaring software:
Synchronize. Development work will begin soon. On Technologies, now
wants to work with us too.
NT 5.0 binary license has been signed.
Installers: requirements doc for make to install v4/v5/16/32 bit apps
has been circulated.
Wade: Helptools seems to be going very well. In March: extending user
base. Getting IT partners involved will be of high value. Hope to
complete many bug fixes and enhancements by the end of March.
Tim: Writing Requirement project still on hold, but other things going
on in the student arena that may clarify organization and result in a
change of status of the project.
Y2K: Assessment phase has largely ended. Not as much response as we
would have liked, but sufficient time has elapsed that it is important
to announce what was learned. Focus will shift from assessment to
outreach and education. The return on effort for the assessment was
much lower than hoped for, but there are un-accounted-for benefits of
raising the issue in areas even if no response came back.
The PSALMS project is scheduled to wrap up discovery in mid march, and
expecting to recommend some small development efforts.
Greg: Four important projects out there: Web based teaching and
learning, Council on Educational Technology Infrastructure, SAP Budget,
and SAP HR modules.
Ted T'so: Suzana visited Integration team to look at other search
engines than Harvest. Requirements review is key. A real discovery
effort is required.
Bob Ferrara: Janet Littel has been tidying up our web pages.
Conferences: NERCOMP is 22 -24 March. Greg and Lorraine are presenting.
Power Building in Los Angeles. Usability testing course: Reply to
Kate Kibbee today.
Wish List: Keep those wishes coming. Lots of them will get fulfilled.
