I/T Discovery Process Planning

Work-In-Progress, August 15, 1995

Greg Anderson, Director, I/T Discovery

Establishing the Discovery Process

For the Discovery process, the primary focus to date has been to establish the process and to plan for its full implementation and work. Although Discovery efforts have been always been a component of the IS effort, the process framework identifies Discovery as an identified, ongoing effort to make IT at MIT the partner of choice in delivering value-based, quality products and services to the entire campus community. For Discovery, therefore, energy has been focused on establishing and incorporating it into the framework and on identifying Discovery efforts underway or ready to begin.

As a customer focused process, Discovery must be agile and open to ideas and initiatives that may come from a variety of perspectives: from the customer, from the IT landscape, from any point in the new IT framework, from Redesign efforts, from vendors, or generally from the higher education, government, or societal landscape. The process must be able to pre-qualify these ideas quickly, determine the value of the opportunity for the customer and MIT, analyze and provide a high level design, and explore the opportunity enough to commit to the effort in the context of other work and IT priorities.

Facilitating the setting of IT priorities is a burning issue which will be resolved in the August 15 - December 15 transition phase. Especially at MIT there are many exciting opportunities and ideas for innovative IT exploration and development. Our determining criterion, however, is which of these neat ideas help us achieve our business imperatives, where business encompasses the full mission of MIT for education, research, and service. >

Work underway as of August 15:

1. As a customer-focused process, Discovery has been working with Academic and Office Computing Practice to identify common goals and needs in order to create an effective, pro-active interchange between customers and the IT framework. This effort is described in detail in the section on Practices/Discovery Startup
   
   
2. Discovery is now involved in connecting the IT framework to Reengineering efforts. Through the R/IT group, connections and interactions have begun with:
   
   
   • ADDS: Alumni, Resource Development, and Gifts Office project.
     
     
   • Supplier Consolidation: Electronic catalog and campus credit card initiatives.
     
     
   • Management Reporting: implementation of the SAP environment at MIT, with special attention to capabilities for new functionality and support of additional administrative processes.
     
     
   • TAP/TQF: the academic appointments process support and a consolidated, campus-wide query facility for faculty, staff, and student information.
   
   
3. IT work extends across the entire Institute. Discovery is building connections with other projects, such as:
   
   
   • Medical: implementation of a new LAN environment with connections to MITnet.
     
     
   • Office of Sponsored Programs: a new system for tracking and management of sponsored programs at MIT.
     
     
   • Physical Plant: with the implementation of the new system, work continues to augment its capabilities.
     
     
   • MIT Libraries: with the implementation of the new system in the Libraries, effort has shifted to collaborative work with the vendor to create the next generation of client/server based library services. Continue the IS/Libraries Distributed Library Initiative (DLI) collaboration.
     
     
   • MIT Press: connections and support continue in the Press effort to create electronic journals and books.
     
     
   • Sloan School: Alan Chaiken, Andy Oakland, and Greg Anderson met with customers from the Sloan School to discuss their proposal for a bidding system for Sloan School interviews and a class scheduling facility. A response to the proposal was submitted.

New Discovery Work August 15 - December 15

1. Continue establishment of Discovery within the IT framework. This includes implementation of the shared proposal with Academic and Office Practice to provide resources for the sustainedoperations of these efforts.
   
   
2. "Rounds" In concert with the Office Computing Practice Leader, begin outreach and pro-active communications with MIT's business centers and customers.
   
   
3. To support the work of IT, investigate and build a portfolio of analysis tools and methodologies that will support fast, flexible design and evaluation of large, medium, and small project efforts. Emphasis will be on best practices that enable discovery projects to be properly scoped and for IT priorities to be set based on a solid understanding of the initiatives. One size does not fit all in the spectrum of work accomplished in IT; therefore, we must be able to fit the most effective approach with the work at hand.
   
   
4. Follow-up on the back-to-school projects. With each project leader and customer, a debriefing of the operation with an eye toward future improvement and strategies will be scheduled in September.
   
   
5. Continue IT framework planning and transition. Coordinate with other Process, Practice, and Competency Groups to complete work in this phase of the transition and to prepare for Phase 3.