[272] in I/T Delivery
DRAFT Discovery Project charter for "Operational Plan Alive!"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim McGovern)
Fri Nov 5 14:05:09 1999
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Message-Id: <v04020a02b44898d4b6e3@[18.152.1.21]>
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 13:58:55 -0500
To: magellan@MIT.EDU, delivery@MIT.EDU, integration-ptl@MIT.EDU
From: Tim McGovern <tjm@MIT.EDU>
Cc: tjm@MIT.EDU
As I promised this morning, below is the charter for the Discovery project
that will determine how we can capture all of the Operational Planning work
done recently, and keep it alive... Comments MOST welcome to
<mailto:tjm@mit.edu>, in lieu of having set up anything else to send them
to ;-).
Tim
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I/T Discovery Project Charter
Project Title: Operational Plan Alive!
aka: The I.S. Work Database
The Discovery question
Information Systems, like all MIT organizations, has just completed
a major planning effort that describes both existing, and future,
work looking out to 2002. The knowledge contained in the products
of that effort within IS need to be captured, shared, and updated
as changes in our work occur, as we learn new things about existing
or new work.
This Discovery project will determine what type of automated tool
is required to keep the products of this year's planning efforts
live and up-to-date, establish a schedule, and estimate the type
and amount of resources that will be required to achieve success.
Scope
The tool that we envision will encompass information about all work
that is conducted in Information Systems, both operational work and
project work, both historical information from past projects, as well
as information about current projects, and requests for future
projects.
Current environment
There are currently two different approaches to information about
our work: 1) the IS Projects Database contains information about most
of the projects that are currently underway, as well as historical
information about past projects, and 2) the ITLT has captured infor-
mation about operational work in a set of Excel spreadsheets.
Business strategy fit
The key benefit of building a new, integrated tool that encompasses
all
work is provide a single place for everyone who has a need for this
kind of information to go--to communicate new information, to report
on progress and so forth.
Discovery project work
We estimate that about 1 month of effort will be required to do the
Discovery work, including the writing of a report.
The Discovery deliverable, a report, will include the following
sub-deliverables:
a) an accepted business rationale for the effort
b) an accepted technical design for the tool
c) an accepted set of user, access, data and record keeping policies
d) an accepted data model for the information domain under study
e) an accepted set of performance estimates for the steady state.
Work can commence as soon as there is agreement on this charter.
Team membership recommendations
The Discovery effort will be led by Tim McGovern, using a leveraged
staff approach. This means that a number of the staff and leadership
around IS will be involved as expert resources, helping to provide
guidance and other information for the Discovery project.
Impact on other I/T processes and practices
The Discovery project will not impact other processes, but the
vision of a unified tool to serve both project and operational work
implies that at some point in the future, the current IS Projects
Database will be transitioned into the new tool.
Integration and infrastructure requirements
The technical design will adhere to all relevant integration
requirements.
Risks and constraints
The prize in this effort is providing a tool that ITLT can use
daily to record changes in the work of the organization. The need
for such record keeping starts now, with the completion of the plan.
We are already behind in terms of providing the kind of tools that
would make this possible, so he biggest risk I see is whether we have
the resources and the resolve to build yet another new tool soon
enough to allow ITLT to keep the information current.
Team sponsor and commitment path
Since this project involves the heart of what Information Systems
does, there are many stakeholders, opinion holders, and otherwise
concerned. I propose that the executive sponsor for this work be
be Jim Bruce. I further propose that he delegate most of the
day-to-day sponsorship and guidance to Bill Hogue and Bob Ferrara.
The ITLT in toto owns the go/no-go decision for moving ahead into
Delivery.
