The formal procedure is published in the IS&T Library of Procedures: Retirement Decision
What are the drivers for considering this product or service offering as a candidate for retirement?
- Product end of life
- Lack of owner ship (orphan)
- Lack of adoption
- Support burden
- Reasonable alternatives exist
- Other:
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 ?
What is the magnitude of the version change?
- 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.or service offering?
What is the value and/or benefit of doing
...
the retirement now?
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.
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?
Are we in alignment with the IS&T Priorities and Mission
...
?
What are the costs/impact of not doing
...
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 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.
- Are there alternative products or service offerings to replace it?
- Will customers need to be transitioned to a new service offering?
- Workload, resources, costs for each group
- What is the cost of steady state? What is the cost of transition? What is the break even point?
- What are the external External dependencies on a product - laws, regulations, features, functionality
Are we in alignment with the IS&T Priorities and Mission?
What pieces of support do we recommend for this product?
- Help Desk (Tier 1 & 2) - though minimal questions expected
- Product Expert (Tier 3) - Cecilia and DCAD
- DITR - supports FM servers for DLCs under SLAs
- DCAD consultation, development and support
- User Group Support - FMUG
- Distribution through VSLS
- Documentation beyond product front door
- MIT specific Training - various FileMaker level classes
...
- and functionality?
What are the roles needed
...
or the
...
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
...
retiring the product or service offering as described? Include customer transition estimates if applicable...
Who can we get to lead the
...
effort and when?
When do we have resources available for this
...
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?