[28] in I/T Delivery
Delivey Team Leaders Meeting 3/7/97
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey On the Road)
Fri Mar 7 14:20:00 1997
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 97 11:57:16 EST
From: wdc@MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey On the Road)
To: delivery@MIT.EDU, saurons@MIT.EDU
Next Meeting will be 3/28 in W91-250
----
Updates:
Project DB:
Still waiting for Database Group review.
Then system moves to W91.
We are also doing some fine-tuning of the user interface and the
database schema.
Hiring Opportunities and Status:
A little discussion about the Job Fair MIT attended.
ITLT update:
A contractor, Erinellene Dayl has been hired by MIT. She is a
specialist in facilitation. (I guess that "facilitation" here means
getting various folks who don't talk to each other to do so.) One job
she has been handed is to look at ITLT.
Windows NT Course:
Two day course, on using NT.
First run is April 9 and 10, but it's oversubscribed, so there'll be
another run soon.
Send rferrara a note if you're interested.
Business Recovery issues in Delivery:
Just like every department doesn't have its own plumber for leaks, so
too the departments don't have their own business recovery team. Both
are central MIT services.
Functional Area Recovery Management Teams.
Each department DOES write a recovery plan which determines the level of
criticality of the service, and deals with naming the appropriate backup
and recovery work.
Gerry Isaacson handed out sheets naming the four levels of criticality
and a page that list 11 considerations to think about with regards to
recovery planning.
Keeping Delivery Web Pages current:
Project database here is important.
Publicising project opportunities:
We should use the it-project-news mailing list and other means as we
think of them to publicise what is happening.
----
Discussion of process for acquiring machines:
Projects budget for production servers, but what about machines for
testing, and what about recovery?
Athena makes this sort of thing easier by standardizing on a common
server platform and keeping spares. The spares can be deployed for
development work in advance of orders being fulfilled.
It behooves us to remember:
There is a production level server.
But you develop changes on a TEST server separate from the
production server.
A third system may be required to catch the load if the
production or the test system fails.
Three ideas:
Need to make explicit the process of acquiring machines.
In our planning, we need to include the fact that we are buying
hardware.
If we know of many projects with similar needs, can we set up a
pipeline to anticipate the needs?
Budget Notes:
Given that there are less than 4 months left in the year, we need to
become progressively more accurate in our spending forcasts for the rest
of the year.
From the open positions, there may be money available, so we should
think of wish lists and forward them to Lorraine.
Performance Appraisal Process:
Appraisal forms are due in to Lorraine by 24 March.
Feedback on preliminary numbers: They went in with very few changes.
Some discussion over the annual committment to changing the review
process to deal with the brokenness and never changing it.
----
Roundtable:
pbh: "Any questions for me?" Pass.
wdc: "I already talked about Project DB." Pass.
rocklyn: SAP web project is proceeding. Have successfully displayed
requisitions. Have demonstated authenticated transacton creation in SAP.
Mary Weiss: pass
Mbarker: we came out with a patch release that helped mail not get lost
in the queues on the client machines.
jim repa: ECAT went in production officially this week. Still tweaking
the Windows installer.
wade: HRPD work is in progress. Various documents on project work are
getting written.
Brenda Gillingham: Helping out with various projects: Scanning of
documents for financial people. She is also making available an
interesting article on project management mentoring. BU is hosting a
four day Project management seminar by the Project Management Institute.
If people are interested in attending or even just spending a few hours
there, see Brenda.
sao: The course evaluation project is moving forward. Looking for
development resources.
Larry Dean: Physical Plant data management project Discovery Effort is
complete. Business Systems Resources has given ADDSTRAT group some
dates for modules they will provide. SAP documentation project have
developed a Scope Statement. Data warehouse project has scope and task
list pretty much done.
Gerry Isaacson: Recovery plans are on Gerry's home page. There's a new
Word Based virus on campus. It affects BOTH PC's and Macs. Triggered
on March 6. Hangs system if you open the doc.
Tim McGovern: pass
Bob Ferrara: Looked at Power Builder 6.0. Ted T'so helped raise their
consciousness about security issues.
-----
Demo of Scopus by Wade. cancelled for this meeting.
