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11/25/2008

11 am, N42-286, CSS Managers 

Agenda

• Hot Round Table items (15 minutes)
  • Jeff: clients asking for news on rates, and Jeff can't say because he's waiting for the rate plan from the Virtual Server Service.  Jeff wants to raise his rates anyway, in smaller increments and more often than in the past (which may have been a multiple year skip), perhaps in line with MIT annual budget process.
  • Jeff: Grade20 extract has changed and some fields have changed, breaking alignment with some other filemaker programs used that eat that data; to do this fix work, Grade20 in the new format may need to be given to them, triggering sensitive data issues.  Wilson: the solution before was to completely scramble the data.  Followup up with Mark Damian to find out the holistic approach.  Steve Lerman will have something to say about iti.
  • Chris: DUE 50-50% split position is currently on hold waiting for DUE to complete a position approval process.  Steve Burke working on it.  So we'll see.
  • Wilson: some of the cost savings idea seem radical, but hey, they're proposals.  Gratifying that our "personal well-being" was a major filter on the ideas submitted.  Creative thinking in personnel matters will be essential to achieving savings rates of 5% more each year for three years.
  • Wilson: organizational review news: massive amounts of data has been collected by Jerry.  Now he will review things with Terry Stone to socialize the rationale for decision-making.  Deans, VPs, other Sr Mgmt need to be behind any changes.  Likely to be an All-Hands on January 20 or 21st for the personal announcements of the plan.
  • Wilson: Exchange thing -- next steps include developing the downstream effects of what will happen if Exchange goes live.  The big question we need to have an answer for is "Email for the community", not just "calendaring".  We need to have a story about Email/Calendaring.
  • Wilson: Winter Project Priorities list was mailed for confirmation to VPStaff yesterday, and that list will go around to css-managers today for review.
• More on Cost Cutting (15 minutes)
  • Taeminn is in charge of the overall project.  Rob is the CSS point person.
  • Work we can do while a central list of ideas is being gathered is to analyze out team businesses to see what is what with respect to services delivered vs the cost of doing them.  How would we know how much we could actually harvest if we change the way things are or what is done.
  • There is a central server space on Sparkler for the aggregating of ideas from all the directorates
• XDPP visit by Mark Wiklund, report out...
  • followup with internal team managers and project managers about pubs engagement with project managers.
  • want a periodic process. 
  • Kate: met with Rob yesterday -- discussed the evolving project engagement process.
  • Waiting to be contacted won't be helpful.  we need to take charge and engage them with defining our requirements. 
  • What is the FBC view into the projects?  Can't see very much time allocation.
  • December 5th meeting should include an overview of the whole project milieu and not just how to put projects into Daptiv.
  • Wilson: Daptiv use -- I want everyone to use Daptiv at level 3, with these attributes: 
    • project members
    • list handoffs and deliverables
    • overall milestones
    • some tool, not necessarily daptiv, for detailed project plans, resource commitments, etc.
    • ISDA approach shows all the projects to all the managers, for instance, and we could adopt this practice ourselves.  Wilson would like us to catch up to the ISDA example without going to time sheets. 
    • Jeff Reed noted that there isn't enough support for Daptiv in the organization, around reporting development in particular.
• Performance Objectives (30 minutes) -- come with an understanding of how your four or five performance objectives align with the Operating Plan or the Service Quality Goals plan of 2008. 
  • I don't want to see just the list of 109 activities. 
  • I want to see personnel development activities, etc., that are part of grooming the team you are leading.  How are each of you helping to make CSS a better place?  Cross-team goals... how say Jana is collaborating more with Barbara to improve relationships across CSS.
  • Don't put items that are wishlists -- put items that can be measured, have impact, etc.  It's not just projects, but people development, communications, etc.
  • Back to costs: it makes little sense to axe training (since it's an investment in our people) rather than axe a project whose money could be recovered to do different work.  It's important to sustain the investment in our people.
  • I would like to have you come prepared at a one-on-one coming up with a list of goals. 
  • We need to look at the 109 for the ones that pertain, then edit them down and make something of them. 
  • We need to make a Living Plan and we have decided it will be editable text in the wiki, (not the Word document).   The wiki will be easily exported for attractiveness in Word or PDF format. 

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11/18/2008

11 am, N42-286, CSS Managers 

Agenda

• IT cost cutting at MIT (wilson)
  • opened with the response to Susan Hockfield's letter of 11/10/2008. Find some % to save in the coming year. 
  • The intent is to be better prepared with "what can we cut back on" if asked.
  • So let's collect ideas just in case.  Send 'em to Rob and we'll aggregate them.
    • the printing of needless flyers now mailed and then thrown out, including is&t newsletters.  Doing away with printing these things across the institute.
    • Lunches and other feel-good gathering enablers -- better prediction of how many people will actually eat it, reducing extra $50 here and $50 there.  Don't schedule metings over lunch time just to justify getting lunch brought in.
    • Follow hardware standards that extended support warranty repair rather than cash repairs.
    • Managers should reduce their travel, in favor of staff being able to continue to get out and have training.  Go to local outlets for training, like the Waltham office of some company.
    • CSS is mostly people... so can the same people do more work in order to prevent hiring additional hires.
    • Can DCAD take on more pay-MIT-first-inspired work (which might take an additional staff person) and capture money that would otherwise be leaving the campus.  Can we be more creative in establishing a close supplier relationship and get a better price on the web site contracting that they do?  (Cut down the inefficiencies of too many suppliers.)
    • Need to balance morale against luxury -- like, for whom do you cut travel and development? 
  • Who can really do the cost analysis to justify the savings?  If it's in your area, go ahead, else don't spend a lot of time on it.
  • Defer future expenditures in a three-year horizon ...
    • hardware replacement
    • "luxuriant" open positions  -- the real savings come when you don't fill a planned position.   Should be able to take credit for giving it up.
    •  
  • Luxuriant expenditures --
    • internet access, cell phones. Seven years ago, okay, but not in this day and age. 
  • Increase collections --
    • Jana mentioned VoIP.  Once a DLC is transitioned in the VoIP space, we should start charging that DLC for new, future MACs.   We don't do that now.
  • Is there room to institute new revenue-generating services?  The DLCs might say they don't have the money for that.   
  • Watch out for other departments forgoing basic technological health care visits (which is to say, they have no sysadmin or help staff and don't plan to get any).  Chris says only two departments have left DITR and that's only because the DITR consultant went to work for each of those departments. 
  • There's a risk that short-term savings of $50 here or $50 there will lead to big losses down the road if some dire problem then happens.  E.g., big security spill because no one wanted to buy small things.  MIT Press data spill was the example discussed.
  • Remember the goal is save MIT the money, not just IS&T. 
• A parting thought on Goals from Wilson..  
  • Glad to formally move Paul H into Software.  I don't like floaters -- want to see individuals with a specific managerial home. 
  • what are your top five performance goals for the year?  Measurements, if possible.  Not "I should do well" but put some metrics around it.  The team should not be penalized from the managers' lack of
• review status of Fall 2008 Service Quality goals (smyser)
  • see http://web.mit.edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/ist/org/css/managers/workplans/CSS-Service-Quality-Goals-Fall-2008.doc
  • the group looked at the document with little recognition.  For Mark and Jana, there was no prior participation.  All want a chance to look at it more closely. 
  • Closer look required especially in light of the current economic climate.  Given the present situation, would we still want to put these forward as things to do or be able to say we have done?  Or would we cancel some as cost-cutting measures?  Or would we elevate some in priority as ways to really save MIT some money?
  • The question to work on with Wilson is "how publicly are we committed to this list?"  What is the current level of our public commitment to the goals as listed.  Does Jerry expect us to be working on them?  Do the Directors as a group know about or expect them to be followed up on?  Was it just a list of things Don collected to appease Jerry in their one-on-ones? 
  • This list could very well evolve into part of the five performance goals per team idea that Wilson mentioned. 
  • More dicussion is needed, perhaps at the next Managers' meeting, assuming there is room on the agenda.
•  

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1:00 pm, N42-286, CSS Managers 

Agenda

• Update on the Exchange project (Deb Bowser)
  • Deb Bowser posted her notes as presented to the group .
• High-Priority Item Roundtable, as time permits

...

12 am to 2 pm, Broad Auditorium, CSS All-Hands

Agenda

• 12:00 to 12:30 Lunch
• 12:30 to 01:30 Q & A, Town Meeting-style, mostly about the IS&T Organizational Assessment with Accenture.
• 1:30 to 2:00 Jerry will join us.

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11 am to noon, N42-286, CSS Managers 

Agenda

• Review software vocabulary for Software Grid (jmhunt & atticus) 
  • printed writeup of proposed vocabulary was circulated by Jon at the meeting.  That text is posted off the main CSS wiki page.
  • we reminded ourselves of the IS&T new web site look-and-feel, into which this download page would fit. 
    See http://mv.ezproxy.com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org
  • Questions that came up:
    • Should we devote web page space to the "Support" column on the web page (the group says Yes) 
    • How do we indicate that a product is on the way out?  How do we convey the current lifecycle discussion about why we're at the version we're at and you should know about it.  (Maybe Hermes.)
    • What about the "More details..." link -- put all the useful detailed info there.  Include the product lifecycle info, accessibility compliance, download size, etc.
    • How do we decide to provide, say, Brio, instead of some competitor tool -- who is "we" and "when did they know it?"  Sidebar conversation about the internal team-driven politics of major software acquisition.
    • How does a product get on to the web page -- what set of checkboxes in a checklist will get the product into which category?  Mark Kate and other in-CSS support providers want to have a more formal process and have a role in shaping the check list.  Jon went through attempts at this years ago, but it's time to do it again, and better.
    • What's the timeline for having this finished up -- Spring 2009, in sync with the IS&T web site. 
  • There seems still to be a tug-and-pull about the purpose of the download page in a use-case sense.  Have we tried from a customer view to articulate scenarios about why they come to the page and what they ought to find there.  It was done a while back, but for a very and more complicatted different page design.   
  • People need to be able to see the design intent of the original redesign project so that we know what the plans were so we can align with the features articulated.
• Call for cost-cutting/cost-saving measures (tjm & all).
  • Taemin call Tim to get a list of cost-cutting measures that CSS plans to undertake, to provide content for an Academic Council meeting .  Are we being asked to look for ways to save MIT money from the CSS perspective?  Yes. 
    What measures might we take and wouuld they save money...  If you have ideas, forward them.  Rob will create a page to receive ideas.  That page will be off the CSS wiki page. 
• Proposal for a 30-minute agenda item in a future meeting -- how to link when a product is decided upon to the process of creating training and documentation and product front doors and so on.  Each is different, but what is the visible triggering event for the create-support-for-this process.  Where in the organization are these facts articulated?  Agreed on as a topic for a future meeting.
• Proposal for a 30-minute review of the IS&T web site design with respect to the information architecutre.

...

11 am to noon, N42-286, CSS Managers 

Agenda

• Quick look at the new CSS Managers wiki page (smyser)
• Quick recap: Hermes week one (othomas)

...

11 am to noon, N42-286, CSS Managers 

Agenda

• Ken Lloyd (klloyd@mit.edu) discussed the 1/2/3 prioritization of HR attentiveness to particular open position efforts.
• CSS All-Hands date and agenda setting.  Nov 6 or 7, noon to 2; agenda is 1. lunch, 2. Q&A, mainly on Accenture project.  Efforts will be made to ensure this is really all-hands.
• Future CSS_Managers' agendas -- will be assembled using contributions from us to a wiki-mediated agendas page that Rob will facilitate. 
• Equipment -- be sensitive about sporting the very latest best stuff yourself, but if a staff person is using old, sad equipment, feel free to instill a point of pride by way of a new laptop, say.
• Accenture updates and discussion