[43] in magellan
Summary from yesterday's meeting - 1/28/1999
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Anderson)
Fri Jan 29 09:23:30 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 09:23:25 -0500
To: magellan@MIT.EDU
From: Greg Anderson <ganderso@MIT.EDU>
Good morning everyone,
I thought it useful to recap what I heard as key points discussed
in our conversations yesterday:
1. As part of Discovery, exploration of software is appropriate,
especially when the strategy is to go for a vendor-based solution. In that
exploration, you will continue to _discover_ things, not all of them good.
In the example from yesterday, you may find the code is sub-standard and
you will need to determine how to deal with that (correct problems
ourselves or use the problems as teachable moments for the vendor). Most
importantly, perhaps, you may find during the course of your relationship
building with the vendor that they had not fully disclosed their future
directions. In our example from yesterday, it was discovered that the
vendor's strategy was to move to NT and gradually to discontinue support
for the product we're investigating. The sense of the group was to call the
vendor on this one: if the vendor is interested in a long-term relationship
with MIT, this kind of behavior (progressive, controlled disclosure of
information) doesn't work for us as customer.
2. Sponsorship. We discussed the role and accountabilities for Sponsors
extensively. If sponsors are on board for discovery, this means that they
are on board for change. The responsibility of the Discovery team is to
keep the sponsor informed throughout the work and to actively insure that
the sponsor is still on board. It is the sponsor's responsibility to carry
the political and strategic agendas that the team's recommendations imply
(recommendations will / should almost _always_ imply organizational and
human change - if the recommendations don't do this, then that needs to be
clearly stated). It is the Discovery Process Leader's role (Greg's), if
needed, to facilitate these understandings between the sponsor and the
team.
3. Tools and Techniques.
A. Off-site events. Leslie discussed the benefits of a team off-site to
focus in a concentrated manner on the work. Because many staff are
thin-sliced across many responsibilities, a full day focused on the work
can yield energetic results. Having a facilitator and a communications
role for the day is also advisable - this enables the team to focus on the
work and the facilitator and communicator to provide process and products.
B. Mentor/coach for entry into Discovery. Dave brought up the issue of
the relatively swift turn-over among those participating in the discovery
space. For those of us already working on Discovery projects, how do we
ease the transition and lower the threshold for new projects and project
leaders? The idea of a mentor/coach pairing was favorably received; Greg
can improve his work with new team leaders, and existing work (through the
Project-db, project notebooks, and Magellan) can give new team leaders a
flavor of the type of work expected.
4. Next meeting: Thursday, Feb. 11, 1999, 1 - 2, N42-203.
In the next two weeks, please give some thought and analysis to
your projected Discovery end date. How realistic is it? Should it be
revised? If so, what's the new date.
Preliminary issue to think about:
In his last report, Tim posed the question: Should all Discovery
reports be put on the web? I'd like to visit that question on the 11th.
5. Kudos. Thanks to all of you for a really good meeting yesterday. Given
the wide array of projects, I think we hit a productive common ground that
spoke to issues that concern all of us.
C. Addition to the bi-weekly report format. For projects with project
notebooks (I would strongly suggest that almost all projects have one),
please include the url in your reports. This enables another reader to go
from the specific bi-weekly to the full project context.
