[515] in magellan
Minutes: 22 Sept 2000 Project Team Leaders Meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Fri Sep 22 11:59:19 2000
Message-ID: <Utms7Ytz0001QA30Jf@mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 15:59:32 +0000 ()
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: magellan@mit.edu, delivery@mit.edu, integration-ptl@mit.edu
Tentative next meeting is October 27.
Remember that Thu Sept 28 at 3:00 is the W92 open house.
Agenda
10:15 Opening (Greg)
10:25 October Sponsor Satisfaction Survey for Projects (Greg)
10:35 Project Accounting (Greg, Bob, Susan)
The outcome is to understand
When we will do project accounting.
What the work of project accounting is and who will be
doing it.
The use of new project templates for the budgeting process.
Some of the deadlines.
Ken and Luann are invited guests for this meeting since they will be
helping us with this activity.
11:15 Update on Quarterly Reports and Strategic Plans (Greg)
11:30 Round table
----
* October Sponsor Satisfaction Survey for Projects
rferrara handed out the current draft of a survey to be emailed out to
project sponsores periodically. He is still interested in any feedback
on it that people have.
There was some discussion of the context around the survey:
Other ways of doing surveys.
The way we use the IS Discovery/Delivery etc. processes to decide on
ways to do surveys.
The issue of sponsors who are not as closely engaged with the project
as we would ideally like.
Additional questions suggested:
"Do you feel as sponsor that you understand the work that the team is doing?"
"How often did you meet with the project team, or project team leader?"
Possibly move question #5 in the survey to be question #1 and to read:
"I feel effectively involved in this project and understand the work
that the team is doing."
Process suggestion: Kick off the engagement by the Process Director
meeting the project sponsor in person to set up a baseline. Use the
survey as a guide, but establish the basic connection in person. Most
importantly is to establish:
The sponsor feels they ARE the sponsor, and if so, are they engaged
and understand the work.
Overall satisfaction with the work, and if dissatisfied, why?
----
* Project Accounting
Brief discussion of how the document format should be in something like
HTML so that more people can directly work with the documents, and so
that we set the example of functionality being more important than
beauty.
Feedback: Having the budget process change dramatically every year is a
problem. Learning each new way has significant impact on our ability to
do work.
Information: Most projects we're working on will not need separately
filled-out project templates. Principles:
If Jim asks for one because he needs to be prepared for external
questions about a project.
If the project is funded from outside sources.
If the project budget is costing more than $100,000 per year.
For example, in the Academic Practice, Delivery sees only Pismere as
needing a filled-in project template at this time. There would be two
other groups of projects: Academic Practice, and Office Practice.
Much discussion of context and scope for the budget work associated with
the projects.
----
* Update on Quarterly Reports and Strategic Plans
azary, rferrara, and ganderso submitted Q4 quarterly reports to try and
get restarted.
Format:
Overview
Some project measures
Committments and plans for next quarter.
Information: The project bi-weeklies, and integration monthlies can be
a real aid to the quarterly reports. Discovery and Delivery had a very
easy time generating the Quarterly Report from them.
Next quarterly report is due October 15.
----
* Update on Quarterly Reports and Strategic Plans
Plan is on the web in PDF.
Discussion of PDF's limitations:
Really not useful until you print it out.
Static.
Very pretty but not very functional.
Hope was expressed that the format would change to the more accessible,
and more useful, and more easily amended HTML table format.
----
* Roundtable
Reporting of Service Projects: (rferrara) We are closing in on a
standard way of reporting project work regularly. Can the Service and
Support projects use this method too?
Project/Plan Alive Questions: (azary) Project Database is considered
read-only, and the plan-alive database is not up yet. The state of the
plan-alive database will be nailed down very soon.
Enterprise back-up: Backing up 2-3 terabytes of data each night, with no
major problems. Next step is to switch the DB's to online backup --
first with the development SAP system, then for the production SAP
system.
One to one student computing: (ganderso) Pulling together possible
scenarios for individually owned student computers. Presenting to MIT
CET on Monday morning.
communicating w/ customers: (ganderso) Meeting held with broad range of
team leaders to solicit experiences of communicating with customers.
Project kicked off. Pondering who should be on the team.
Agenda topics for this meeting: (ganderso)
What are topics in the project space that people feel need discussion?
- sponsor definition/engagement.
- project risk management
