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This page receives the agenda of a css managers' meeting after it has happened, often annotating the planned agenda with a short note about what developed around it.

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.
  •  

Notes

Kate Kibbee is at a Training All-day offsite and cannot attend.  Kate will followup with Rob to post her ideas to the spreadsheet. 

11/12/2008 - Wednesday substitution for 11/11

1:00 pm, N42-286, CSS Managers 

Agenda

Notes

  • Oliver will be traveling and will not be able to attend this meeting
  • Rob will be taking children to medical appointments and will not be able to attend this meeting.
  • Kate is teaching all day and will not be able to attend.
  • Mark will be working from home - plumber coming to restore hot water - but will have a Pubs Team member attend in his place.

11/7/2008 -- CSS All-Hands

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.

Notes

  • Oliver will be traveling and will not be able to attend this meeting
  • Jonathan will be traveling and not able to attend this meeting

11/04/2008

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.

Notes

  • Wilson is traveling
  • Oliver will be traveling and will not be able to attend this meeting

10/28/2008

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)

As it happened...

Jana joined us by phone from home.
We began with hot items roundtable, including the agenda items as we came round to them...

  • Mary -- "accessibility features" will be on the campus map in a static PDF format.  This is very exciting.
    In campus map version 2, the features will be integrated in as something searchable and printable.   Campus map v.2 is being built and could be checked out interactively at map-dev.mit.edu
  • Tim  -- MassRegs has finalized regulations for data breach; a comprehensive plan from MIT is due Jan 1 to stay in compliance and MIT is increasingly aware that it is not going to make it.  There are ramifications felt at the senior level of the Institute.  Big impact on ITSS, with blowback to the other sections of CSS that may be asked to comment on encryption of regulated data.
  • Barb  -- a.) Josef Doczi is on extended medical leave in Hungary until at least the turn of the calendar year.  A temp has been hired for the Help Desk to backfill in the call center; an excellent fellow recently from Harvard.
    Karl Witt is assuming Bomgar responsibility in Josef's place.
    b.) HR Payroll Service Center is looking at sharing Hermes wiki as a common knowledge base, part of the larger effort to make the HR Payroll situation better.  HR Payroll is #1 on Terry Stone's radar.
  • Jon  -- Oracle Client is being refreshed; choice between 10.x and 11.g not yet made.  Our current version 9 is something like five years old and is becoming unsupported in some important product, prompting the refresh.
  • Mark -- old SAP documentation is being refreshed, with resources from SAIS but coordinated by CSS. 
    Payroll documentation (which was all created by Mark) will be stable until next summer.
  • Kate -- SAP courses are being refreshed.  Kate will connect with Mark so the documentation and training perspectives are in sync.
  • Oliver -- Hermes is now alive for Helpdesk use and IS&T viewing at kb.mit.edu.  Ability to author is administered somewhat by request in order to have team-level introduction to system and authoring expectations.  DITR is a target client, as is DCAD.  DCAD wants to move its web publishing tip-set out of AFS into Hermes.
    Oliver will be gone for two weeks starting tomorrow.
  • Chuck -- an 8-hour per week SLA is starting up with Libraries.  This is a new use of DITR, where a DLC with an active IT organization of its outsources desktop support to IS&T in order to concentrate on the application of IT within its own core business (namely academic research).
  • Jana -- strides have been made to get a much larger proportion of VoIP tickets resolved without mandatory escalation to OIS.  
  • Jeff -- Testing the HR prioritization of help with hiring system discussed last time, Ken Lloyd proved to be very helpful with a level 2 position that had been open a long time with very few resumes submitted.
    Jeff will be involved in the News Office's search for a web strategist for the home page (recently mailed around by Susan Curran).
    Must move the Filemaker Users group meeting to accomodate the All-hands on 11/7; the move is underway.
  • Wilson --
    a.) has created an Exchange project wiki to contain the for-now private material needed by the team to do its work.
    b.) partly because of the Exchange project meeting he attended, Wilson has identified a need for someone in CSS to be the coordination point for all the commitments of people to projects.  Putting so many CSS people on so many projects will not scale.
    c.) some sort of central tool to take care of this needs to be adopted.  it's likely that daptiv can play this role when CSS is ready to use it.  daptiv has also put a change in resource requesting into the next planned release, in which projects can request specific individuals and not just a resource type to be filled from the pool. 
    Action item is for Rob to coordinate with Darlene a session on how CSS should go about adopting Daptiv as a work coordination tool.  Collect questions from the managers and leads, and have a two-hour afternoon demo center meeting about it.

We should have the meeting next week even though Wilson is away.

In Wilson's absence, he plans to appoint a delegate to act as him, including going to VP-staff meetings, etc. if needed.  No hiring and firing (you're safe, you now who you are).  Tim will be Wilson's avatar for next week's trip. 

The All-hands agenda has turned into Lunch for the first 30 minutes (12-12:30), then 12:30 to 1:30 Q&A town meeting, then jerry joins us at 1:30.

Notes

  • Jana works from home and cannot attend; access phone number is 781-436-3630. 

10/21/2008

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
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