[34] in I/T Delivery
Minutes: 28 March 1997 Delivery Team Meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Fri Mar 28 15:36:21 1997
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 15:36:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: saurons@MIT.EDU, delivery@MIT.EDU
28 March 1997 Delivery Team Meeting
Next meeting is 18 April 1997 in E19-741
Budget Update:
There is a bit of surplus. At ITLT Jim suggested folks think of
little projects that could be handled with a short-term contractor. The
idea is to spend the surplus that way. People with ideas of how to
spend down the surplus should suggest them to rferrara.
Performance Appraisal / Hiring Update:
We're on target with Appraisals.
Bob Basch has accepted our offer and starts April 22.
ILEAD:
Mention of Brian from MOR Associates's excellent talk on Coaching
Mention of the ILEAD discussion of the Projects Database kicked off
by Jeff Schiller.
Project Database Update:
The Projects Database Implementation Implementation team met
yesterday and even caught Jeff to understand what he meant. Various
changes have been contemplated.
Wade asked what the resource requirements were expected for the
system. Bill Cattey answered that the team felt that one day a month
for a person or two was probably appropriate, and that the effort
estimate to make the contemplated changes was three days or so of work.
The Implementation team will meet again on Monday to further discuss
what to do.
Issues raised around the table:
Q: What is the cost of making no change?
A: Possibly harming the ability of the system to track projects because
there's an obstacle in the way of getting them in.
Q: What about making a director-restricted capability to turn a project
into a formal project from an informal project?
A: The team has considered that as one change to make.
Q: When will projects be deleted from the database?
A: Probably never. It was planned that it be an archive.
Q: Won't that make it hard to find projects?
A: Bill said he thought that in the 6 month timeframe, additional pages
that separate out formal, informal, completed, in-progress, and maybe
pending projects. But that's for when we have 1000 project we're
tracking. Adding new web displays is not hard.
Note also: As we've worked with the implementation, we've discovered
that the implementation of the initial requirements needed
simplification, and we did SOME of that, but worked at getting the
system out as QUICKLY as possible. There ARE holes -- if you know the
names of pl/sql procedures, you could probably do things you're not
supposed to. Making the contemplated changes may open up new holes,
even as we close such holes as make sense to close while we make the
changes. At some point we should schedule the work to do a cleanup so
that the system more robustly implements the requirements as we now know
them.
Bob (and others agreed) that it's better to just say what polite
behavior is, and let people know than to work super-hard to enforce it.
NERCOMP:
New England Regional Computing -- Vijay Kumar is the chairman.
60 or 70 Attendees.
Jeff Schiller gave a talk on what is necessary to do effective audio
and video delivery over the net.
ITLT Update:
Bob and Greg have picked a project to pay close attention to and
review and make sure that the processes all do the right thing -- as a
learning experience.
----
Competency Group workplan update:
A 9 page excertpt from workplan was handed out that focuses on the
strategies, and names what actions are planned and what ideas are to be
focused upon.
The delivery team is the first group being visited with the
implementation team. The intent is for many teams to be visited.
Note: The workplan is a draft. Feedback is REALLY helpful. Some
sections are under revision.
There was a half-hour or so of discussion where Erin Hoffer and Shirley
Picardi heard ideas on the role of Competency Groups, the Role of
Leadership, and other things.
Jim Repa suggested that some places think of human resources like
grocery shopping: technical personnel as commodities to get at the
lowest price.
Bill Cattey suggested that some places do human resources in a way,
perhaps, analagous to the way they recapitalize equipment. He
contrasted the good way like the Athena renewal process where sensible
and predictable budgets keep equipment recapitalized every year versus
the buy it at what the market sells, pay minimal maintenance, use it
until it fails, and then scrounge money to buy again.
Wade reminded us that there are many synergies possible between the
competency work and the HR reengineering efforts.
----
Delivery Web Page discussion:
The revision of the Delivery pages is an improvement.
The project database pointer page does a good job of telling what to do.
It was mentioned that it was hard to find one's way when one goes
through the web pages. Some sort of "where am I" aid like the tree shown
with the web pages in the Museum of Science 'Leonardo' exhibition.
Someone suggested the IS organization be portrayed as a Lava Lamp. (No
it wasn't Bill. He only WISHES he had thought of that.)
The certificate-free Projects Database access point is up, so the pages
need to change again to reflect this. All the stuff about using the
system and getting certificates will move to a section on MAINTAINING
rather than VIEWING projects.
----
Roundtable:
Bob Ferrara reports: There is work afoot to get a business credit card
that is hooked directly into the financial system. This is different
from the ECAT pro-card because pro-card doesn't have a physical card.
Rocklyn Clarke: SAP Web is CHANGING. There were some technical
problems. And there has been call to have it subsume the functionality
of EREQ.
Rocklyn handed out printouts of the slides of two talks, one on the
Capability Maturity Model, and one on the Personal Software Process.
Larry Dean: The data warehouse project plan is 80% complete.
SAP Technical Documentation Project is moving forward.
ADDSTRAT project is in trouble: The vendor wants way too much money for
the modifications required.
Jana: TQF is preparing a new release to deal with the Warehouse's
current inability to track current employee information back through
history if the employee changes departments.
Some TQF deployments have been made on NT machines.
Training efforts are pending information from Personnel on how they want
to present this facility to people.
Paul Page: working to get a sense of the resource usage on the version 1
and version 2 SAP stuff.
Wade: HRPD 6 weeks in to an 8 week planning project.
Scopus: Database upgrade issues. Vax/VMS client improvement. Email,
and Web interfaces are being investigated.
Greg Anderson: The subject/teacher evaluation project is moving into Delivery.
Joel Moses, the sponsor was very pleased with the process, the results,
and the quality of the collaboration.
New discovery project is starting up:Dave Lamber and Brian Murphy are
working on a process to move projects into Service.
Bill Cattey has been spending about 90% of his time on personnel issues,
and 10% on the project database.
Jim Repa: ECAT is just about ready to bring a third vendor, BOC Gases
into ECAT.
