[499] in Project_DB
FYI: possible new database fields
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Barker)
Tue Jul 6 10:43:17 1999
Message-Id: <4.1.19990706103615.00d304d0@po11.mit.edu>
Message-Id: <4.1.19990706103615.00d304d0@po11.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 10:40:04 -0400
To: project-db@MIT.EDU
From: Mike Barker <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
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Please note that this is a report on POSSIBLE changes, not yet firm.
To avoid surprising anyone, on July 2nd I heard about a possible revision of
the database to support work that the ITLT is doing for the five-year plan.
The basic idea is to use a template somewhat like:
1. Project Name -- what is it?
2. Justification -- why is it important? How does IS justify its budget?
3. Customers/Practice -- who has requested the new product/service/support?
4. Dates --
- start
- end - when will it be in service and support?
5. Status -- similar to current use in project database
6. Strategic Themes -- to which theme does the project align?
7. Resource Requirements
- Project/Unit Budget -- note: need PROJECT ACCOUNTING to do this right
- Person-Months -- what do you need to do the work?
8. Success Criteria -- what metrics or measures tell you the work is complete?
9. Accountabilities
- Team Leader/Project Leader -- who is responsible for the project and
the project (or unit) team?
- ITLT Member -- who is the point-person to JDB and the rest of ITLT?
10. Priority -- high, medium, low
There are several new fields here:
2. Justification -- why is it important? How does IS justify its budget?
Presumably a text field.
6. Strategic Themes -- to which theme does the project align?
I believe this is expected to be a short list -- e.g. five or six short
sentences. We may want to consider a "pick list" to make it easy to get the
right one. Although I suspect it may be possible for a project to align
with more than one theme.
7. Resource Requirements
- Project/Unit Budget -- note: need PROJECT ACCOUNTING to do this right
- Person-Months -- what do you need to do the work?
I'm guessing that this is going to be two numeric fields for now. A single
dollar figure for the budget, and a single number for the person-months.
8. Success Criteria -- what metrics or measures tell you the work is complete?
This should probably be multiple text fields, each containing a description
of one metric or measure.
I believe the other fields are basically already in the database.
There is a suggestion that we provide BrioQuery access to the database as
part of this to allow easy reporting of the new data.
There is also a suggestion that this could (eventually) be used as the basis
for quarterly reporting. At that time, obviously, we may need some "canned"
reports.
Note that the plan is for the directors to be responsible for the content of
these new fields.
Timeframe: by 7/15, we should have a good idea of what the template fields
are. Between 7/15 and 8/15, ITLT is supposed to fill out assigned templates
-- I'm sure that the sooner we have a working database for them to put the
data in, the better.
mike
