[417] in magellan
EHSS Project Update - March 15, 2000
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rob Smyser)
Wed Mar 15 17:34:26 2000
Message-Id: <200003152234.RAA13288@melbourne-city-street.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 17:37:46 -0500
To: magellan@mit.edu
From: Rob Smyser <smyser@MIT.EDU>
Cc: rclarke@mit.edu
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Project Name: EHSS - Environmental Health & Safety Management System
Project Leader: Rob Smyser, Rocklyn Clarke
Report Date March 15, 2000
Submitted by: Rob Smyser
URL: http://web.mit.edu/is/discovery/ehss/
Accomplishments past period:
- Met with Director of Procurement, Diane Shea, to review the obtaining
line item detail about purchases to feed our desired database of materials
inventory.
- Met with Helen Shorr of SciQuest to review the system that Procurement
may be looking at to coordinate multi-vendor end-user web-based purchasing;
this with an eye to how to get vendor-supplied line item detail out of
their system in order to feed our materials inventory database.
- Met with Rocklyn to hone our database design -- tables, entities and
relationships, etc.
- Met with Sponsor representatives today to discuss a new and immediate
need for a reasonable sketch of the project outcome to support proposal
writing to the EPA. The proposal requires detailed and real cost estimates
for development and acquisition of modules, using numbers that we will be
held to. And we need it in a week. Hmmm.
Goals for the coming period:
- Create an executive level summary view of what the project(s) would be
based on what we know today from all our central office interviewing.
- Assemble design details to support ballpark cost estimates.
- Interview IS team leaders for a sense of the real costs of doing things.
For instance, Casetracker -- what did that cost, including hardware, really?
- Get all the mostly-formed but not written down in an elegant way design
ideas _written down_ so that it looks like we're as far along as we really
are.
Issues:
- Acute sensitivity of some of the motives underlying the project mean that
we're not always operating with all the data we should have. It's not clear
to me that I can divulge even this much.
- We're running up against a need for real numbers now. Need help from the
Directors or whomever to help get ball park figures fast.
- It's not timely or fortunate that Curtis left.
Key learnings:
- Need more than one project meeting per week to keep it on track.
- Check in with the sponsors frequently -- especially in the beginning and
around issues of project scope and timing.
Team dynamics:
- The team is great.
Additional comments:
- Getting some of the central office people to offer specific facts about
their work can be difficult. Not sure why.
----------------
Rob Smyser Business Liaison Team, MIT Information Systems, N42-040
smyser@mit.edu 617.253.1358 http://web.mit.edu/blt
