[62] in I/T Delivery
30 May 1997 Delivery Team Leaders Meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey On the Road)
Fri May 30 12:57:35 1997
Date: Fri, 30 May 97 11:58:37 EDT
From: wdc@MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey On the Road)
To: delivery@MIT.EDU
Next Meeting is 20 June 1997 E19-741
Updates:
Project Database:
Mike Barker, Brenda Gillingham, and Bill Cattey met to discuss how to
make the Project Database more useful. They cooked up a draft approach
to content standards.
To be useful for quarterly reports, the project database needs to record
for each project the most recent accomplishment and the next short term
goal. The schema would have to change to accomodate these items. So in
advance of so big a change, we recommend that the "Headline" field be
temporarily co-opted to hold those items. (Conceptually most recent and
next short term accomplishment are headline items, so it's not so big a
stretch.)
Bill, Mike, and Brenda are working on clarifying documentation:
Guidelines for document type definitions,
A review of the document types -- additions, remove duplicates,
One page guidelines for each document type,
Eludication of appropriate documents for appropriate project lifecycle
flows.
Bill, Mike, and Brenda, together with appropriate others will begin the
review of the Project Database, and the appropriate database modeling:
Requirements Collection based on use
Future redesign for version 2.
----
Hiring Status:
There are still open positions and many opportunities to fill them.
"If you know anybody good who's looking..."
Budget Status:
Keep your eyes open for further opportunities to use end of year money
in useful ways. Deadline is June 16.
Update "Vision" and Purpose
We will review the goals in an ongoing basis.
Note: The IS/resources database looked like a short term goal, but
should turn into a real project with business analysis, and careful
sponsorship.
----
ITLT Update:
It was all about space this time around.
Timeframes for various moves have become more definite, as Jim, all
along, has been saying would happen. As this information becomes
definite enough, we'll be notified what the actual timelines will be.
It looks like a plan has been formulated that will fit everyone, but
the specifics of who sits where has not been decided.
----
IS Forum -- Delayed.
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"Office Hours"
In trying to address the issue of being more accessible, Bob is setting
Monday afternoon as his office hours. If you want to discuss something
with him, give him a call then.
----
SAP "Rollout 98" Projects list
Played last Wednesday to a packed house of interested administrators.
(Looks like the tasks and order of events are getting better organized
and more clearly described.)
----
Database Expo in Boston
Wade attended a Database Expo. Databases are becoming more central to
lots of businesses. This year Wade didn't see much of anything in new
initiatives. Most of it was rehashing of common sense ideas, which in
itself can be a good thing.
----
Report from Susan Minai-Azary on Integration
The Integration web pages have been revised to give a better view of how
Integration can be helpful.
The requirements web page will soon be released that mentions that new
Web applications should use certificates instead of IP address based
restrictions.
Integration has been asked about Java. Some discussions have taken
place about recommendations, but no official recommendations have been
made.
A couple useful Java tidbits:
Different Java implementations have non-portable aspects.
Testing under multiple platforms is a real requirement.
Speed is an issue, Mac Netscape is really slow.
Connections back to "phone home" to a web server are not secure.
Java does not interoperate with Secure Socket Layer yet.
Note also that apparently Jeff Schiller has blessed JavaScript as now
being secure enough to use.
JavaScript DOES interoperate with SSL.
----
Roundtable:
Wade: Personnel plans to roll out in August, web pages that describe
benefit choices, and a Web Based open enrollment system for November.
In other news, wade is investigating Scopus Mail and Web clients.
Paul Page: Potential issue of Windows 95 sites wanting to run SAP and
not to switch to NT. Also possible issue of needing certification of
Internet Explorer as a supported web browser.
Rocklyn Clarke: Temporary SAP web platform has been commissioned. The
development machine SPARC has been brought up and cut over for demos.
Issue of security in communication between SAP web server and SAP
server. Not a major issue. Will be dealt with fully in version 2.
Service will be available "Early June".
Bill Cattey: bringing up a pilot project to deliver scanned images of
MIT theses and Computer Science Technical Reports to the communityl.
Brenda Gillingham: Windows NT team has just started creating the
documents for NT support. Significant amounts fo the stuff will be
online by July 1.
Jena: Telecommunications support of ICE-9 system moves apace.
Mike Barker: Release is moving along reasonably smoothly. FYI: 30 zip
drives will be deployed into public clusters for people to use.
Jim Repa: Roles database project is proceeding. Investigating SAP
authorizations, and whether/how they can be interfaced to the Roles
database.
Larry Dean: Shelly Brown announced no Fund raising campeign this year,
and this serves as a possible de-motivator for the ADDSTRAT project.
SAP technical documentation templates are done.
Bob Ferrara: Duncan/Nevison has proposed to do a series of lunch-time
seminars.
Tim McGovern: Writing project has suffered some setbacks. Delivering a
smaller, more focused release in late July/early August. Focused on
Student arrival in August rather than full redo of the automation.
