[78] in I/T Delivery
Quarterly reports - input needed Monday
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert V. Ferrara)
Thu Jul 31 20:11:04 1997
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 20:14:47 -0400
To: delivery@MIT.EDU
From: "Robert V. Ferrara" <rferrara@MIT.EDU>
Cc: itlt@MIT.EDU
People, as mentioned at our last Delivery Leaders meeting, quarterly
reports are due. You can either send me your updates by Monday evening,
or - better - add a few sentences into the Last Quarter Accomplishments
and Next Quarter Goals section of the Project Database, where it can be
visible to many more. I just checked and a handful of people have done
this already.=20
Then these inputs can be turned into something that looks like the 3Q97
report below.
Cheers, Bob
=20
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IT Delivery
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Report (January-March) -
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HTTP://WEB.MIT.EDU/IS/DELIVERY/<italic>
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I. ACCOMPLISHMENTS
A. NEW PROJECTS
Procurement Credit Card. A team has been formed to pilot and implement
procurement credit cards for the MIT community. The IS activity to date
has focused on evaluating the various software options for departmental
users as well as the central functions. A goal is to integrate with SAP
as much as possible the seven processes involved in credit card
purchases.=20
MIT Data Warehouse Financials. A project to incorporate the SAP
transactional and master data into the MIT Data Warehouse was approved
by senior officials on January 14. The driving force - and initial
pilot group - is a coalition of six major research labs. The labs'
committee, chaired by Prof. Claude Canizares, issued a joint report and
recommendations late last year. Design work on the expanded warehouse
has been underway since January.
The actual rollout will occur in sequential stages starting in the
fall.
B. CLOSED/SUSPENDED PROJECTS
Athena Backup System. This in-house "build" project has been formally
closed in favor a new "buy and integrate" option available with AFS
version 3.4. Key features missing in earlier Transarc offerings are now
to be available in Transarc's version 3.4.=20
Management Reporting Authorization. Because of the policy decision to
continue "open" visibility of purchasing data, this project has been
suspended. Various modifications to SAP had been considered and to
limit data visibility. None were perfectly secure or inexpensive. The
best defined proposal would have cost an estimated $400K to implement.
C. ROLLOUTS
ECAT. The Electronic Catalog was formally rolled out on March 3rd for
Windows and MacOS 7.x platforms. All the previous showstopper issues
were resolved and 200 cards have been distributed as of 4/1. Web pages
and installers are available.
Project Database. This database, designed to display information on
MIT's I/S and I/T projects, is now certified and available for
production use. After installation of its new production server in W91,
this marks the first production use of an Oracle database with a Web
front end secured by MIT X509 certificates.=20
The Query Facility. The TQF application has a PowerBuilder 5.0 desktop
client securely accessing personnel data in the MIT Data Warehouse.
After training classes on PC and MAC platforms in February, TQF is now
in limited production. Installers have been written for all three PC
platforms and the MAC. =20
Athena QuickStations. This project, sponsored by Academic Computing, is
now being deployed on new Athena stations. The function to time users
was incorporated into the base Athena software.
Alumni/ae E-mail Forwarding for Life. This project was successfully
implemented and transition to the Service Process.
D. SIGNIFICANT MILESTONES
Sponsored Programs Management System. The SPMS system was upgraded to
accommodate the new (SAP) financial architecture. The SAP data feeds
have also been designed and coded.=20
Electronic Proposal System. The EPS project plan has been drafted and
refined. The development effort has been restarted after resources were
diverted for the required SPMS upgrade. Despite the delay, it still
appears possible to achieve two key milestones by the original target
dates - building a working prototype by 8/31/97 and rolling out to the
MIT community in 1Q98.=20
MR Project Team. Paul Page has been very involved in the planning and
restructuring of the MR Team to three units - the Training and
Documentation Team, Roll-Out Teams, and the Development Team (including
technical consultants) which Paul has been asked to lead.
MIT/SAP Partnership. After a series of meetings, SAP has offered to
partner with MIT in the development of a web based
procurement/electronic commerce solutions and to continue our
relationship on security directions as well. Both sides are currently
trying to definitize these relationships to present to senior MIT
management.=20
SAP Change Request. A new formal SAP production change request process
has been designed and has now been instituted on a pilot basis.=20
SAP Training. A week long ABAP training course was held in January at
W89 for MIT staff who are being asked to take over support of various
functions from our MIT consultants.
SAP Technical Documentation. A formal project plan for this project has
been prepared by Larry Dean, and a steering committee set up. Various
documentation templates have been produced.
SAPWeb. The SAP 3.1 Web extensions were first investigated and proven
impractical in MIT's networking environment. Consequently, a prototype
home-grown alternative was built and successfully demonstrated A
preliminary set of specifications has been developed for the web
functions to be implemented for SAP. In the process, this project has
made almost unprecedented use of the Web itself for project
documentation and information sharing. The following web pages are
relevant:
http://mitvma.mit.edu/sapweb/sapweb.html Project home page
http://mitvma.mit.edu/sapweb/sapmit.html Prototype design
specifications
http://mitvma.mit.edu/sapweb/detail.html Prototype function
specs
The specifications are not complete, but are being reviewed by members
of the
Management Reporting team.
Human Resources Practices Development. Steve Neiterman was one of the
core participants in an intense, eight week effort to develop the work
plan for the HRPD team. Steve contributed especially in the areas of
I/T and project planning issues.
HostExplorer Rollout (PC Telnet). Work on an installer for 32 bit and
16 bit versions of HostExplorer is proceeding. A team has been formed
to work on the documentation and
publicity as well as coordinate testing. They are shooting for a May
rollout.
Scopus. This project is proceeding slowly. Currently, Scopus 1.0 has
been rolled out only to the UNIX/VMS help desk. Further rollout awaits
definition of Scopus 1.1 features, including a user Web input form
feeding directly into the Scopus database.
II. ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIVITIES
Delivery Team Leaders Meetings. Continued Delivery team leaders
meetings at a longer, three week interval. The goals of this forum are
to shape a common expectation of the Delivery process and to provide
for information sharing and brief status of all Delivery projects.
Project Support Improvement Team. The recommendations of this team were
largely adopted this past quarter. The delivery leaders continue to
monitor and maintain progress toward the goals outlined in the Project
Support Improvement discovery report.=20
Delivery Web Pages. The Web pages are continuing to grow, and now
feature an active, real time link to the Project Database.
Staffing and Recruiting. Three new MIT staff people are now working in
the Delivery area. We are happy to welcome Brenda Gillingham, Reid
Pinchback, Robert Basch, and Paul Page. Active searches fare underway
for remaining open positions.=20
=46ive Year Plan. Completed the Delivery Five Year Plan and FY98
budget.
III. PLANS FOR FOURTH QUARTER, FY97
Procurement Credit Card. Support pilot. Select production software and
specify all interfaces. develop SAP feeds from partner bank.
MIT Data Warehouse. Publish detailed rollout plans. Develop joint
strategy with MR Project team.
MR Project Team. Re-energize the Development Team to improve teamwork,
efficiency, and depth; as well as, to refocus their direction to that
of being primarily an SAP release 2 implementation support team.
SAP/MIT partnership. Bring to conclusion SAP/MIT procurement/electronic
commerce partnership offer decision.
SAP Change Request. Finish work on the SAP change request process and
move from pilot to full implementation. Begin work on moving the paper
based change request process to an electronic based process and form
with full reporting capabilities.
SAP Transport Process In conjunction with the new change request
process, begin work on a new transport process to address current
transport issues and shortcomings. The result of this effort should be
a new a process that clearly identifies roles and activities in the
transport process.=20
Improved SAP Developer Authorizations. Document a process and identify
roles for the SAP developer authorizations.=20
SAP Technical Documentation. Establish all templates. Complete several
subsystems.=20
SAPWEB. Complete a set of "mock-up" pages matching the functions
specified in the
design and gather customer input about the design and thus complete the
discovery process. As a parallel effort, complete and gain approval for
the "fast track" design specifications (i.e. the display and lookup
functions formerly available via EREQ).
TQF. Continue rollout.
AFS 3.4. Complete project plan.
Projects Database. Populate database, ensure "cultural" connection, and
monitor quality.
Help Desk Tools. Design Scopus 1.1, begin rollout , and assess need for
release 2.0.
Windows Discuss and Windows Zephyr and Mac Moira. None of these
projects saw any progress due to lack of resources. We hope to hire
summer UROPs to work on these in the coming quarter.
Sponsored Programs Management System. Productionize data feeds to SAP.
EPS. Staff up project. Finish project plan.=20
ECAT. Resolve problems with Ksign on Win 95 and NT. Investigate
possibility of daily feed from Amex. Add third vendor, BOC Gases.
Complete documentation necessary for officially "productionizing" the
system
Physical Plant Repair and Maintenance. Make enhancements in the E-mail
-> Maximo database software to automatically store and retry E-mail
messages that fail to process
when the database is down for backups
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