Who is the audience for the product or service offering?
- Who are they (faculty, admin staff, research staff, students)
- How many use the software or service (do we have data?)
- How global is the release retirement (by user, by department, enterprise-wide)
- How do our customers currently get support for this product or service offering?
What is the magnitude of the
...
retirement?
- Is it a major or minor update?
- Is it just bug fixes, or are there new features?
- Is it a security update? If so, does it impact MIT?
- How is the update provided? Via an automatic update, vendor supplied installer, etc.?
- Are there alternative products or service offerings to replace it?
- Will customers need to be transitioned to a new service offering?
What is the value and/or benefit of doing
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The benefit of updates consist of utilizing the vendor auto-update feature which allows users to update their machines to the latest point release (i.e., 6.1, 6.2, etc) that mainly consists of security fixes and feature enhancements. This allows for more end-user productivity and less consumption of IS&T resources.
the retirement now?
Questions we should ask ourselves:
- Are we supporting more than one service offering for the general service?
- What are the associated cost savings realized by retiring the product or service offering?
- what resources can be re purposed once the retirement is complete
- Does the update add a feature or capability MIT needs?
- Does the update fix a bug or problem experienced at MIT?
- Does the update address a major security vulnerability?
What are the costs/impact of not doing
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the retirement at this time?
- What are the costs/impact of not doing a release project the retirement at this time?
- Is it easy for customers to get and correctly apply the update/upgrade?
When does the Product reach end-of-life? What is our planned longevity for this product?
- How many versions of this product are currently supported?
- If new version, will older version(s) be retired?
- What is the vendor end of life statement on the current supported product(s)?
How is the software distributed? How much control do we have over the distribution process?
- MIT network download
- Vendor network download
- VSLS produced media
- Vendor produced media
- to to move to a new product or alternative offering?
What are the downstream effects and implications of decisions on various groups? Help Desk, DITR, Security, Training
...
, etc.
What are the other external dependencies for this product or service offering? e.g. laws, regulations, features, etc.
- Workload, resources, costs for each group.
- External dependencies on a product - laws, regulations, features, functionality
Are we in alignment with the IS&T Priorities and Mission?
...
?
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What are the roles needed
...
or the
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retirement effort?
- Project Manager -Manager
- Business owner
- Help Desk (Tier 1 & 2) -
- Product Expert (Tier 3) -
- DITR - for server support/migration -Distribution through VSLS -
- Documentation Pubs -
- MIT specific Training - CSS Training -
- Windows Server Hosting -
What are the resource estimates for
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retiring the product or service offering as described? Include customer transition estimates if applicable...
Who can we get to lead the
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effort and when?
When do we have resources available for this
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retirement effort?
Recommendation
- When should we do this release project? What should happen in the meantime?
- What is the Value vs. Cost?Should we do this release project now?