This document identifies the ongoing teams of Information Systems staff chartered to perform information technology (I/T) work. It marks another milestone in the I/T Transformation, a transition to a new framework for how people work together to build, run and help others use information technology at MIT. This transition has been coordinated by the Institute's I/T Leadership Team (itlt), and involves many others.
The goal of the I/T transformation is to enable the success of MIT's initiatives to reengineer its administrative processes, as well as the continued excellence of its academic computing environment. MIT's reengineering initiatives present a formidable I/T challenge:
In the new framework, most work is performed by teams. Some teams are ongoing, meaning that their charters have no expected end date. Other teams come together for a project and disband when it is done. There are also roles for individuals. Teams and individuals are affiliated with and supported by leadership of three dimensions: practices, competencies, and processes.
For the initial ongoing teams in Information Systems, this document presents the initial charters, team leaders, and members, where those assignments have been settled. It identifies some, but not all of the project work underway and planned, as well as some, but not all, of the individual roles and coordinating mechanisms that are involved in the new framework. Thus, the document is not a comprehensive description of all the work and plans in Information Systems, and it does not address I/T work in other Institute offices.
As these teams begin to work, they will refine their charters and develop their process metrics and goals in conjunction with the process leaders. The roles of team leaders will evolve. Additional teams may be chartered. Some projects will end and others will start. Progress reports about refinements will be published as they become available. In the meantime, many of the new ongoing teams are already at work. Most of the rest are actively planning their launch, with some staff working in both their old groups and their new teams for a time, to ensure that IS customers are well served throughout the transition.
Bp>We welcome your help. We want this transition to succeed for everyone involved. Please send all comments, questions, and suggestions to itlt-feedback@mit.edu
Team Charter: Build relationships with customers that ensure IT provides information technology solutions that support MIT's mission and business goals. Establish shared work approaches and assignments that leverage IT resources and provide increased productivity and integration of services to customers, based on several principles:
Assignments/Skills: Common work processes occur across the two practices and the discovery process. Of course, this kind of work occurs not only in this team, and not in isolation. However, this team has the responsibility to drive how these processes are designed and conducted to accomplish practice and discovery objectives:
Assignments/Skills: ambassadors, analysts, surveyor/appraisers, technology explorers and prototypers, communicator, administrator.
Team Leaders: Greg Anderson, Diane Devlin, Greg Jackson
Team Members: Janet Daly, Regina Gogol, Katie Livingston, Suzana Lisanti, Reid Pinchback, Peter Roden, Naomi Schmidt
The I/T Integration Process exists to investigate, recommend, and create an effective and efficient technology infrastructure for MIT computing that is cohesive, responsive to changing needs and maximizes value through the application of technology.
The goals of the I/T Integration Process are to:
The critical success factors for I/T Integration are:
Team Charter: In consultation with community, practice owners, project leaders, and other I/T staff, define, improve, and promote I/T architecture and standards by leading and working on the following processes:
Technology Suggestion Process - generate, gather, and access information on new I/T technology and launch, when appropriate, projects to integrate new components into the infrastructure. Also will suggest data tools and developer tools to improve productivity.
Architecture Improvement Process - maintain and improve the current I/T architecture. Develop and enforce standards, guidelines, and principles; conduct technical reviews of I/T project designs; insure that new infrastructure components integrate well into the whole; and refine and migrate infrastructure to keep it current and integrated by launching projects.
Architecture Use Process - promote use of current I/T architecture by training, developing sample code using infrastructure components, working with staff in Discovery and Deliver processes to provide guidance on use of the infrastructure, and creating appropriate documentation for developers.
Technology Propagation Process - promote, outside of MIT to vendors and other users, the technology strategic to MIT architecture.
Effort: 3.40 EFT ( not including writing specialist or the team leader) May also include MIT I/T staff not in IS.
Assignments/Skills: Mostly senior technical staff members whose opinions other staff members value. A writing specialist part time for at least the first year.
Team Leader: Susan Minai-Azary
Team Members: Jerry Isaacson, Jim Repa, Jeff Schiller, Scott Thorne, Ted Ts'o
Team Charter: Provide data administration specialists to projects. Extend the MIT data model for projects, when necessary. Develop the MIT data model, MIT data warehouse and repository, and data standards. Provide input on data tools selection.
Effort: 3.60 EFT
Assignments/Skills: Data administration, analysis, and programming. Team Leader also serves on the I/T Integration Team.
Team Leader: Scott Thorne
Team Leader: Mark Phelan, Mary Weisse, Eugene Zherebilov
Role Description: Coordinate activities in and maintain and operate the Integration Laboratory, a facility used by development teams to ensure well integrated applications are deployed to the community. Coordinator will do the following tasks. Set up and maintain the lab. Track software and configurations on the lab machines. Schedule people to test applications in the lab. Track dependencies in the software. Keep copies of test scripts provided by each testing group. Track requirements for software on each platform. Announce needs for new testing. Help resolve conflict issues in software and deployment. Call specialists when necessary. Help with deployment planning.
Assignments/Skills: Good communications and negotiation skills, attention to details, and familiarity with multiple desktops.
Search Process: This role will be filled from present Information Systems staff. Contact Susan Minai-Azary (3-7013 or azary@mit.edu), if interested.
The I/T Integration Team sponsors integration projects, which are.often staffed by people other than the people currently serving on the Integration standing teams. People assigned to Integration projects work in the Integration process for the duration of the project. Some of these people also serve on standing teams in other processes. Others work most often on projects.
Some current and upcoming Integration projects are:
Some of the individuals working on Integration projects: Dave Kalenderian, Jenny Khuon, Kee Luk, Steve Neiterman, Andy Oakland, Rachel Sage
The Support-IT planning team spent two months between July and September developing the support process transition plan. This work included:
The details of the team's work is contained in the discuss meeting support-it. The following plan for teams and staffing in the I/T Support Process is the output of Support-IT's work. This plan should be viewed as the initial steps in the transition of I/T support activities to the new process framework. The team structure outlined will continue to evolve over the next 12 months.
In addition to the standing work teams described in this document, a Support Process Coordinating Team will be named that includes the process leader, team leaders for standing teams and project teams, and other individuals. This team will be meet regularly to share information, to plan, to review progress, to address cross-cutting support issues, to identify improvement activities, to coordinate with teams in other processes, and to charter project teams. Through this coordinating work the charters and structure of standing work teams will evolve.
The purpose of the I/T Support Process is to promote widespread effective use of existing I/T products and services by the community. Work within the support process can be viewed in terms of (1) sub-processes and (2) teams and/or individual roles that work within one or more of the sub-processes.
What is a process or a sub-process?
Processes are how an organization creates and delivers value to customers, and they represent its real work, whether or not anyone is aware of them. A fundamental premise of I/T Transformation is that we need to understand the processes that are at the core of the work we do in order to maximize the business value of the work.
We identified five primary sub-processes in the Support Process. These sub-processes are linked to one another and should not operate in isolation.
1. Promote the Use of Supported I/T Products.
The purpose of this sub-process is to promote the use of standard, supported I/T products and services. This is a proactive process which involves on-going product evaluations, identifying and promoting supported products, and making supported products easy to acquire. The trigger for this process is identification of a customer need or availability of a new I/T product. The outputs of this process might include a list of supported and recommended products, a communication plan for insuring that customers are aware of the supported and recommended products, and a strategy for how customers will acquire the products. The bottom-line measure of success for this process is whether customers are actually using the recommended and supported products. This is an important sub-process because its output has a major impact on other support sub-processes, in particular "Provide Help to Customers".
2. Promote the Effective Use of I/T.
The purpose of this sub-process is to promote the effective use of existing I/T products and services. This is a proactive process which involves raising awareness of I/T products and services, educating customers, promoting self-help, and empowering user groups, local experts and other I/T support providers. The trigger for this process is identification of a customer need. The output of this process might be a document, newsletter, training class, workshop, brochure, awareness campaign, user group meeting, or feedback from a focus group. The bottom-line measure of success for this process is whether customers are making effective use of existing I/T products and services in their work. This sub-process is tightly linked with other support sub-processes, in particular "Provide Help to Customers."
3. Provide Help to Customers.
The purpose of this sub-process is to coordinate rapid resolution of simple to complex customer inquiries and requests. This is a largely reactive process which includes responding to customer requests which are submitted via telephone, electronically, or by walk-in as well as insuring that customers have access to self-help materials that enable them to resolve many problems themselves. The trigger for this process is a customer inquiry or request. The outputs of this process are resolved customer cases. The bottom-line measures of success for this process are customer satisfaction and timeliness.
4. Coordinate Complex Projects for Customers.
The purpose of this sub-process is to coordinate complex projects for customers which involve the selection and acquisition of I/T hardware, software and communication products. This largely reactive process involves requirements analysis, design/selection, cost/benefit analysis, recommendations, writing proposals, and project management. The trigger of this process is usually a customer inquiry or request. The output of this process is usually a completed project or a decision to not proceed with the project. The bottom-line measures of success for this process are customer satisfaction, meeting deadlines, and whether we are doing the right things the right way from an institutional view.
5. Coordinate and Enable Work in the Support Process.
The purpose of this sub-process is to plan, organize, coordinate and enable work in the support process. This includes defining processes, tracking and improving process performance, obtaining and assigning resources, identifying recurring problems and implementing solutions, managing outreach efforts, and maintaining common tools and facilities that assist work.
Descriptions of the new standing work teams and roles follow. There are several things to note before getting into the detailed descriptions:
- There are several different dimensions that can be considered when structuring teams. These include sub-process, customer base, and technology. Many of the new standing teams work in only one of the sub-processes described above. Other teams work across several of the sub-processes described above with a focus on a specific customer segment, for example, Academic Computing Support Team, or on a specific technology, for example, 5ESS Support.
[NOTE: SEE CHART IN PAPER VERSION]
-Some of the new teams map quite easily from existing teams. In these cases, the membership of the team will probably remain much the same as it is today. Other teams do not have clear mappings from the old IS structure. In these cases, our plan is to work out team assignments during October through conversations involving individual staff members, team leaders and the process leader.
-We expect a number of the standing teams in the Support process (I/T Help, Effective Use, Department Computing Support, Desktop Products) to have a core of team members who are full-time and other members who are part-time. We don't expect more than a few people to be split across more than two standing teams. Individuals who are members of standing teams may also participate periodically on project teams.
-The standing teams will become official after the teams are staffed, hopefully by early November. This will be announced. Existing teams will phase out as new teams are formed. There will undoubtedly be some time of ambiguity.
-In the following team descriptions, level of effort for a standing team includes both full-time and part-time administrative and support staff effort associated with the team.
-We have not included financial and general administrative support roles in this description of the Support process since this is addressed in some detail in a separate section of the document. In summary, individuals who provide general administrative support will be organized into "site services" teams which will service teams and individuals at their "site". Sites will be defined for E40, Building 11, W91, E19-3/4, E19-6/7. In addition, a financial administrator will be assigned to the overall Support process.
Team Charter: Promote the use of supported and recommended products and services for the desktop throughout MIT. This will include developing, implementing, and overseeing a new process for
Sub-Processes: This team works in the sub-process "Promote the Use of Supported I/T Products".
Assignments/Skills: Part-time product coordinators/evaluators/specialists for each of the major product categories.
Effort: 2.0 EFT
Team Leader: To Be Announced. This is a new full-time role. See description below. Role will be filled from present Information Systems staff. Contact Cecilia d'Oliveira if interested.
Team Members: Chris Murphy, John Saylor, Al Willis, MCC representative(s), others to be added
Team Leader, Desktop Products
Description: Team Leader, Desktop Products is a full-time role. The individual filling this role will design, establish and coordinate a new process of product evaluation, selection, promotion, and distribution for supported I/T desktop products. This new process will include
Product evaluations and recommendations will be the done by a team of part-time product evaluators/specialists. Team leader will do the following. Design and coordinate process. Establish framework and calendar for product evaluations. Work with key constituents to identify products to be evaluated and to develop evaluation criteria. Facilitate the work of the team of evaluators/specialists. Participate in the evaluation of products. Maintain and promote list of supported and recommended supported products. Work with teams in Integration and Service to insure coordination with evolving I/T infrastructure. Work with teams and individuals in Support (esp. I/T Help, Effective Use, Support Planning) to insure coordination regarding product support levels. Target key software for site license and facilitate distribution of site-licensed software, as appropriate. Identify preferred vendors/distributors for products to insure ease of access and attractive pricing.
Skills: Project management, facilitation, communication, negotiation, broad understanding of desktop hardware and software products, process orientation, customer focus, experience with product evaluation and testing methodologies. Able to work independently, inside and outside IS.
Team Charter: The purpose of this new team to insure effective use of existing I/T products and services. This involves raising awareness of I/T products and services, educating customers, promoting self-help, and empowering user groups, local experts and other I/T support providers. The trigger for work by this team is identification of a customer need. The output of this team might be documents, newsletters, a training class or entire curriculum, referrals to outside training resources, workshops, self-paced materials, brochures, awareness campaigns, or user group meetings. This team also has responsibility for managing the IS Training Lab.
Sub-Processes: This team works in the "Promote Effective Use of I/T" sub-process.
Assignments/Skills: Full-time and part-time Consultants, Writers, Trainers, Project Managers, Communication Specialists. We want several part-time staff on the team who are also members of I/T Help Desk or Departmental Computing Support.
Effort: 14.5 EFT plus student staff.
Team Leader: Jeanne Cavanaugh
Team Members: Sharon Belville, Mary Ellen Bushnell, Joanne Costello, Phyllis Crerie, Kevin Cunningham, Gary Dryfoos, Carol Elder, Robyn Fizz, Phyllis Galt, Susan B. Jones, Joanne Larrabee, Janet Littell, Marilyn Mercer, Gail Garfield-Neuman, Jeff Pankin, Lee Ridgway, John Saylor, Tawney Wray, Esther Yanow
Team Charter: The purpose of this new team is to provide a single point of contact for customer inquiries and requests and to coordinate rapid response and resolution. This includes both simple and complex problems. The primary customers of this team are staff and faculty in MIT offices, departments and laboratories. Customer inquiries and requests may be handled by telephone, electronically, thru walk-in and/or by on-site visit for networks, microcomputer hardware and software, mainframe, administrative applications, and software library.
Sub-Processes: This team works in the "Provide Help to Customers" sub-process.
Assignments/Skills: Computing generalists and specialists with experience at network, microcomputer, mainframe and/or software library help desks. This new team will have a core of team members whose primary affiliation is with the I/T Help Desk Team and other team members who spend 1/3 to 1/2 of their time with the Help Desk Team and the remaining 1/2 to 2/3 time on another team, such as Effective Use or Departmental Computing Support. This team will include many student staff.
Effort: 14.0 EFT plus student staff.
Acting Team Leader: Harold Pakulat. A full search is underway through MIT Personnel Office. (Job Number 95-0778A)
Team Members: Alicia Allen, Art Anger, Jerry Burke, Mike Drooker, Cynthia Endriga, Debi Fuchs, Bob Lang, Joanne Larrabee, Peter Lee, Gail Garfield-Neuman, Bryn Oh, Mike Sampson, Fawyn Slawter-Howe, Rob Smyser, Lynne Sousa, Al Willis, Carol Wood, others to be added
Team Charter: The purpose of this team is to provide a single point of contact for inquiries and requests from Athena and residential network users and to coordinate rapid response and resolution. This team includes Athena consulting, Athena user accounts, and residential computing support. The primary customers of this team are MIT students.
Sub-Processes: This team works in the "Provide Help to Customers" sub-process.
Assignments/Skills: Full-time consultants with knowledge of Athena Computing Environment and MIT's residential computing network. This team has many student staff.
Effort: 5.5 EFT plus student staff.
Team Leader: Carla Fermann
Team Members: Matt Goodman, Tom Lane, Fawyn Slawter-Howe, Oliver Thomas, Mark Van Dyke
Team Charter: The purpose of this team is to provide a central point of contact for individuals internal and external to MIT who are trying to contact members of the MIT community.
Sub-Processes: This team works in the "Help Customers" sub-process.
Assignments/Skills: Full-time Telephone Operators.
Effort: 6.0 EFT
Team Leader: Valerie Hartt
Team Members: Janice Abou-Zaki (on leave), Diane Catalano, Claire McCarthy, Anne Quinn, Joanne Williams, others to be added
Team Charter: The purpose of this team is to provide a single point of contact for customer inquiries and requests related to MIT's 5ESS and voice mail systems and to coordinate rapid response and resolution.
Sub-Processes: This team does work in sub-processes: "Provide Help to Customers" and "Coordinate Complex Projects for Customers".
Roles/Assignments: Customer Service Representatives, Consultants, Customer Service Center, Help Desk staff.
Effort: 8.5 EFT
Team Leaders: Valerie Hartt and Louise Keohane
Team Members: Toni Browne, Peggy Condon, Donna Previte, Marian Sindelir, Robyn Yearwood, others to be added
Team Charter: The purpose of this new team is to promote the effective use of I/T resources in MIT offices through the coordination of complex customer projects. Projects will typically be referred from the I/T Help Desk but may also result from central initiatives such as Re-engineering. Team members assist MIT departments in the selection, acquisition, and installation of desktop hardware, software and/or networking. Team members help departments plan and implement desktop hardware/software upgrades and network installations. Team members advise customers on implementation strategies and on-going use. The work of this team is very project-oriented and involves requirements analysis, design/selection, cost/benefit assessments, written proposals, and project management. Team members work closely with the Office Computing Practice Leader.
Sub-Processes: Over the next 6-12 months this team's work will be primarily in the sub-process "Coordinate Complex Projects for Customers" based on work associated with complex network installations, Re-engineering, and preparation of administrative desktops for the rollout of ReEngineering applications.
Assignments/Skills: Full-time and part-time experienced consultants and project leaders. Good communication and project management skills. Solid understanding of networking technologies. Expertise in desktop hardware and software and knowledge of, or interest in, office computing.
Effort: 4.0 EFT
Team Leader: Mike Sampson
Team Members: Jerry Burke, Dave Kalenderian, John Saylor, Brian Shannon, Rob Smyser, others to be added
Team Charter: The purpose of this team is to promote the effective use of educational computing resources among faculty by providing assistance, information, third party software, and access to electronic classrooms. The work of Academic Computing Support Team includes the promotion of instructional computing at MIT, through direct interaction with faculty and also through publication of periodic newsletters and other materials. Team members advise faculty users on courseware delivery strategies, software package selection, and use of equipment, and assist faculty and their associates in the development of educational software. They are responsible for bringing third party software applications into the academic computing environment, from initial selection, through negotiations with vendors, configuration, installation, and support. They assist with the planning of new facilities for the delivery of academic computing, and are responsible for setting and implementing policies for use of electronic classrooms. Team members work on projects and teams with other groups in Information Systems involved with the evolution and support of the Athena Computing Environment. This team works closely with the Academic Computing Practice Leader.
Sub-Processes: This team does work in sub-processes: "Promote Use of Supported I/T Products", "Promote Effective Use of I/T", "Provide Help to Customers".
Assignments/Skills: Full-time Faculty Liaisons, Electronic Classsroom Coordinator, full-time Software Acquisition Coordinator.
Effort: 5.5 EFT
Team Leader: Naomi Schmidt
Team Members: Maryam Afshar, Dot Bowe, Tom Krall, Katie Livingston, David Lukas, Reid Pinchback, Alex Prengel
Team Charter: This team promotes the effective use of CWIS and electronic publishing tools by providing assistance, information, and access to third party software.
Sub-Processes: This team does work in sub-processes: "Promote Use of Supported I/T Products", "Promote Effective Use of I/T", "Provide Help to Customers".
Assignments/Skills: Full-time and part-time Consultants, Writers, and/or Communication Specialists. This team has a number of student staff.
Effort: 1.5 EFT
Team Leader: Suzana Lisanti
Team Members: To be determined
Team Charter: This team provides technology-related assistance to all members of the MIT community who have disabilities, to the people who work with them, and to departments and groups. This includes information and assistance about access technology solutions for the calssroom, laboratory, office and computing environments.
Sub-Processes: This team does work in sub-processes: "Promote Use of Supported I/T Products", "Promote Effective Use of I/T", "Provide Help to Customers".
Assignments/Skills: Consultants and student staff with knowledge of, or interest in, access technology solutions.
Effort: 1.0 EFT plus student staff.
Team Leader: Su Jones
Description: Help teams within the I/T Support Process acquire, implement and use the tools they need to do their work. The priority in the next year will be on the implementation of the Remedy system as the standard problem tracking tool within the Support Process. This will involve working with teams such as I/T Help Desk, Academic Computing Support, and Athena Help to identify requirements, implement the system, coordinate modifications and enhancements, and manage the system on a day-to-day basis.
Skills: Broad understanding of I/T support. Analysis and prototyping skills. Some programming. Experience in system administration. Excellent communication and consulting skills. Familiarity with desktop hardware and software. Able to coordinate and oversee the work of contractors and vendors. Service orientation.
Role will be filled by Barbara Goguen.
Description: Work closely with the Support Process Leader to plan, organize, coordinate and enable work in the support process. This includes coordinating new product/service implementation, working with teams and team leaders to track and improve process performance and to indentify recurring problems and implement solutions. This assignment will also involve project work either as team leader or team member.
Skills: 7-10 years of experience in I/T Support with at least 5 years as manager or team leader. Excellent planning, communication, and project management skills required. Service orientation. Process orientation. Experience establishing and evolving new support models required.
Role will be filled by Joanne Costello.
Several projects of major importance to the Support process are underway or are in the process of getting underway. These projects include staff who are members of standing teams in Support and other processes. These projects include:
Other projects will begin later this fall. These include:
In planning the IS organization structure for Service process work, we've focused on three objectives for the near term:
1. Keep I/T all running, including the service work already underway that is associated with reengineering teams (e.g., SAP installations and operations for the MR/FO delivery effort).
2. Identify and capitalize on opportunities to improve efficiency and customer service; and to alleviate overloads on staff (e.g., database services) and assets (e.g., VMail).
3. Promote working across the service teams and the I/T processes to prepare to efficiently handle the increased service demands anticipated from the campus-wide reengineering rollouts.
The next section lists the ongoing Service teams which must be chartered to operate and maintain MIT's major I/T assets. Each ongoing team in this process has responsibility for a particular I/T asset, executing all the service subprocesses for that asset, e.g., keep it running, monitor performance, fix problems, renew it, ensuring security and business continuity, etc.
In addition, coordinating mechanisms and roles must be established to work among the ongoing Service teams and with teams active in other processes. The coordinating work will generate service process improvement activities and project teams. As a result of those efforts, the structure and charters of ongoing service teams will evolve.
To facilitate these improvements, we plan to establish a several new roles, which are outlined later in this section, as well as a number of cross-team teams that will explore synergies between teams and ways to improve the way we provide services. Some of the coordination teams that we are considering are:
Team Charter: The team is responsible for the installation, maintenance, operation and evolution of MITnet. It provides for 24-hour availability of MITnet. It plans the growth of MITnet based upon network usage statistics and the expertise of the team members. In addition to the base MITnet service (which includes network routers and domain name servers) the MITnet Services team maintains the Athena/MIT Mail storage and routing system, as well as the MIT Kerberos authentication system server.
Effort: 4.00 EFT
Assignments/Skills: network engineering, systems programming, strategic planning
Team Leader: Jeff Schiller
Team Members: Matt Braun, Tom Coppeto, Ron Hoffmann, Bob Mahoney, Chris Murphy
Team Charter: The team maintains the Athena service infrastructure, including the Hesiod, Moira, and the AFS File Servers used by the Athena Distributed Computing Environment. It is responsible for data storage backup of the AFS File Servers as well as the day to day operations of all servers. The team works with other I/T professionals to plan and evolve the Athena services infrastructure.
Effort: 5.00 EFT (plus 0.50 EFT of students)
Assignments/Skills: systems programming, strategic planning
Team Leader: Matt Braun
Team Members: David Krikorian, Brian Melanson, Karl Ramm, Jonathon Weiss, others to be added
Team Charter: The team coordinates all aspects of work needed to maintain the software base for the Athena Computing Environment. It is responsible for evolution, maintenance, integration, packaging and porting of the elements of the Athena Computer Environment as needed to cope with changing hardware, Operating System and third party software.
Effort: 4.00 EFT (plus a 2.00 EFT of students; assumes 5.50 EFT in delivery with 2.0 EFT of students for new ports, etc.)
Assignments/Skills: analysis/programming, systems programming, strategic planning
Team Leader: Mike Barker
Team Members: Bill Cattey,Craig Fields, Bruce Lewis, Miki Lusztig, Mark Virtue, Jonathon Weiss
Team Charter: This team will maintain the services that are available on the network. These include TechMail, Zephyr, discuss, etc.
Effort: 4.00 EFT (plus 1.00 EFT of students)
Assignments/Skills: analysis/programming, systems programming, strategic planning
Team Leader: Paul Hill
Team Members: Paul Biciunas, Tom Coppeto, others to be added
Team Charter: The team is responsible for deployment, support, and repair of computer hardware in the Athena clusters and electronic classrooms, as well as Athena workstations in departmental offices and clusters. The team provides hardware support for Athena servers. The team monitors use of Athena clusters, including ensuring that rules of use are being observed. The team maintains cluster facilities, including inventory and deployment of printing supplies and coordination of cluster renovations and repairs.
Effort: 5.00 EFT (plus 1.00 EFT of students)
Assignments/Skills: computer operator, computer repair technician
Team Leader: Brian Murphy
Team Members: Lou Isgur, John Morey, Carlton Weeks, Joe Welch, others to be added
Team Charter: The team manages MIT's datacenter operations. This team is responsible for operating the various systems installed in W91 and E19-630. This includes printing, data backup, managing an offsite media storage facility, providing data communications support and management of the mainframe batch production applications. The team is also responsible for providing physical security and a stable environment.
Effort: 17.00 EFT (plus 2.8 voucher; includes contract shuttle driver)
Assignments/Skills: computer operator, data communications technician, production coordination, strategic planning, driver
Team Leader: Dave Lambert
Team Members: Bob Caminos, Russ Carpentino,John Doherty, Larry Egan, Bill Furtado, Mark Garchinsky, Bob Gentile, John Guy, Bob Hart, Rudy Magararu, Fran McLaughlin, Mike Mullett, Steve Nartowt, Kaz Shuman, Richard Sullivan, Dave Terry, Dave Turnquist
Team Charter: The team is responsible for maintaining the VM systems (MITVMA and MITVMC) on the IBM mainframe. This includes evaluating, installing, maintaining, tailoring and resolving problems for: the operating systems software (VM/SP HPO, VM/ESA, CMS), software products (languages, utilities such as sorting, etc.), and other programs (e.g. MAIL) and service virtual machines. The software and server machines perform such functions as electronic mail, security, accounting, tape use, backup/restores, running batch jobs, and communications. Responsibilities also include: performance analysis (monitoring and tuning) of systems and applications, capacity planning (ACRM), technology evaluation and software development as needed, and business continuity by maintaining a disaster recovery system.
Effort: 7.00 EFT (includes .5 EFT for billing)
Assignments/Skills: systems programming, strategic planning
Team Leader: Karen Fortoul
Team Members: Art Anger, Konstantine Berdichevsky, Rocklyn Clarke, Jim Dobrovic, Jeff Harrington, Noel Hart, Dave Kalendarian, Dave Lawless, Jim Repa, Tom Rosato, Rachel Sage
Team Charter: Manage the servers being used in reengineering and other administrative functions such as the Comptrollers Accounting Office, Personnel, the Registrars Office, OSP, Physical Plant, and the Libraries. Its work includes helping to specify the hardware/software requirements, installing and keeping it running (with Operations), monitoring and fixing problems, monitoring and improving performance, planning for asset management, and assisting in the planning for business continuity.
Effort: 5.25 EFT
Assignments/Skills: systems programming, strategic planning
Team Leader: Peter Kelley
Team Members: Dave Robbins, Frank Smith, Mark Sprague, Liz Zukowski, others to be added
Team Charter: Maintain the administrative databases on centrally managed servers including the IBM mainframe. This includes the normal day to day maintenance activities such as insuring proper backup and performance as well as responding to the needs of application programmers to restructure or create new databases.
Effort: 10.00 EFT (assumes additional 2.0 EFT in delivery and 1.0 EFT in support)
Assignments/Skills: database analysis, strategic planning
Team Leaders: Carol LeClair
Team Members: Donald Barnie, William Chen, Adriana Christopher, Lynne Davison, Ron Parker, George Petrowsky, others to be added
Team Charter: Maintain the administrative applications for which IS has responsibility. This includes a major effort for the ICE-9 systems and smaller efforts for various other systems such as the lotteries and some departmental systems. This effort encompasses being on-call to fix problems, applying updates, and minor enhancements.
Effort: 2.50 EFT
Assignments/Skills: analysis/programming, strategic planning
Team Leader: Role will be filled from present Information Systems staff. Contact Roger Roach if interested.
Team Members: Kelley Yu, Jennifer Lu, others as assigned
Team Charter: This team is responsible for providing a range of hardware technician services for selected microcomputers, printers, and workstations. Services include diagnosis and repair of hardware failures, installation of upgrades, and interface with equipment vendors on warranty repairs and replacement parts. Services are available on both personal and Institute-owned equipment.
Effort: 5.00 EFT plus .7 voucher
Assignments/Skills: computer repair technician
Team Leader: Linda Lancaster
Team Members: Lou Cronin, Scott Dunham, Tom Holbrook, Kyle Pope, David Rosa
Team Charter: This team is responsible for providing hardware and software maintenance agreements for selected microcomputers, printers, and workstations. Maintenance services may be delivered by in-house staff (e.g., PC Service or Software Library Consulting) or by a contracted outsourced vendor (e.g., DEC, Bell Atlantic, etc.) Maintenance agreements are available on both personal and Institute-owned equipment.
Effort: 2.0 EFT
Assignments/Skills: contract administration, strategic planning
Team Leader: Linda Lancaster
Team Members: Cynthia Finney, Debbie Sears
Team Charter: The team is responsible for the day to day operation of the AT&T 5ESS telephone switch and the associated components such as the ICE-9 system and Voice Mail. It includes providing voice and data services, video and other enhanced services available via the switch, and making available emergency telephones and other special equipment.
Effort: 3.00 EFT (plus AT&T contractors)
Assignments/Skills: telecom switch management, strategic planning
Team Leaders: Louise Keohane and Walter Mansell
Team Member: Annette Smith
Team Charter: The Transmissions Team is responsible for maintaining MIT's wire and cable plant. This includes the installation of the infrastructure for new buildings or renovations, the installation of equipment for network access, maintain the cable TV system, radio services, and satellite links.
Effort: 6.00 EFT (plus contractors)
Assignments/Skills: facilities analysis, strategic planning
Team Leader: Brian Shannon
Team Members: Steve Goldman, Wael Hishmeh, Errol Morrison, Mohammed Sharari, Randy Winchester
Role Description: The purpose of this role is to coordinate the business continuity activities of the systems being run by the service process. This includes:
¥ working with teams in other processes to insure that business continuity requirements are appropriately incorporated
¥ working with other business units to create, test, and maintain FARM team plans
¥ working with other teams in the service process to create, test, and maintain the business continuity environments
Assignments/Skills: technical facilitator
Assigned Person: Role will be filled from present Information Systems staff. Contact Roger Roach, if interested.
Role Description: The purpose of this role is to coordinate the movement of systems into the service process. This means working with the other processes to insure that the systems being developed/acquired will be runable and maintainable by the service process. This includes normal "production" type issues as well as helping to develop standards for creating and documenting maintainable code.
Assignments/Skills: technical facilitator
Assigned Person: Role will be filled from present Information Systems staff. Contact Roger Roach, if interested.
Role Description: The purpose of this role is to coordinate the process improvement activities within the Service process. This includes accessing the current processes, determining which processes require improvement, creating process improvement teams, and monitoring the progress of the process improvement teams.
Assignments/Skills: technical facilitator
Assigned Person: Role will be filled from present Information Systems staff. Contact Roger Roach, if interested.
The I/T delivery process exists so that MIT and its schools, departments, laboratories, and centers realize value as rapidly as possible from implementing new information technology products and services.
A nationwide search is in progress to fill the position of the delivery process leader. For the interim, until the leader is appointed, delivery process leadership responsibilities are being shared among several individuals:
Two coordinating teams are actively involved with delivery efforts:
Since autumn 1994, a team called r-it has been coordinating the I/T work associated with reengineering MIT's administrative processes. Originally, r-it was made up of representatives of the redesign teams and MOBsters, a team established to equip redesign teams with the necessary desktop hardware, software, and network connectivity. At the outset, r-it focused primarily on information sharing about teams' I/T plans and delivery efforts. Last spring, representatives of the new ARTS project joined r-it. As delivery and integration efforts have progressed, r-it's focus is evolving toward coordinating the introduction of new I/T products and services in MIT offices. In July 1995 several members of the I/T Leadership Team joined r-it.
In July, a new "green team" began coordinating the initial transition from delivery to service and support for the Appointment process applications: TAPS and TQF. Members of the green team are Diane Devlin, Cecilia d'Oliveira, Jean Dzengeleski, Karen Fortoul, Marilyn McMillan, Susan Minai-Azary, Claire Paulding, Roger Roach, Steve Scarano. The green team is working to understand the current state of the TAP and TQF delivery efforts and the extent of the gaps that must be overcome before release to the community and to devise a workable and supportable strategy for the initial offering of TAP and TQF.
Enabling processes are essential to getting the I/T work done, and the results of them are often vital for I/T staff, but to most customers of I/T, enabling processes occur deep in the back room. These include such processes as financial management, general administration and contracts settlement.
The trans-it redesign focused on the I/T work, and left the bucket of enabling processes only sketchily designed. Last spring, the IS Finance Team began working with the I/T Leadership Team to define the financial management and general administration process.
The financial managment and general administration process exists to monitor, control, track, measure and report on the sources and uses of resources for I/T work. The goal of the process is to provide the IT Leadership Team, IT Team leaders and IT organization with the Financial Information and Financial Framework necessary to:
More recently, as part of the effort to identify ongoing teams, the I/T Leadership Team decided to form a contracts team that will define and oversee the contracts settement process. It is likely as the implementation goes forward that we will charter additional teams and roles to perform and coordinate the ongoing work of the enabling processes, as well as project teams to improve the processes.
Team Charter: Coordinate the management of IS finances. Manage IS interactions with the Institute's central financial offices. Plan and orchestrate the budget preparation process and prepare the results for presentation and for incorporation in the Institute's budget system. Facilitate tracking actual financial performance against budgets. Support the I/T Leadership Team, team leaders, project leaders, and other IS staff in fulfilling their financial management responsibilities. Work with the Management Reporting/Financial Operations team to introduce the new financial processes and systems associated with them into IS.
Team Leader: Assistant Director for Administration and Finance (search underway)
Team Members: Maryam Ashfar, Sarah Brady, Christine Cavanna, Bill Fitzgerald, Jim Hanlon, John Henriques, Lorraine Rappaport
Team Charters: The teams provide general administrative support to the IS staff and teams working at their site. The support includes such work as space administration, parking administration, vacation tracking, equipment inventories, procurement and travel record keeping, etc. It is vital to keep these "site services" operating smoothly, in order to enable other I/T work to get done efficiently..Initially, there are 6 site services teams: Buildings 10, 11/W20, W91, E40, E19 -3/4, and E19-6/7.
Assignments/Skills: office administration and management
Team Leaders: Christine Cavanna (11/W20); Jim Hanlon, Bob Hart (W91); Lorraine Rappaport, Maryam Ashfar (E40); Bill Fitzgerald (E19-3/4); Sarah Brady, John Henriques (E19-6/7)
Team Members: Robin Dotzenrod, Jean Greene (11/W20), Bev Wazak (W91); David Hogarth, Jane Trull (E40); Ken Higgins (E19-3/4); Lois McGhee (E19-6/7)
Team Charter: Support the I/T Leadership Team in establishing and implementing
IS-wide policies and allocation procedures for recasting administrative tasks in the new framework, such as assigning parking. Develop a shared understanding of the best administrative practices already in place in IS and work to perpetuate them, developing more shared databases, for instance, about resources such as office computers and software. The team must also work with reengineering teams to coordinate the IS-wide participation in the rollout of new processes and applications. The team may charter process improvement teams.
Membership: A representative of each site services team
Team Leader: Assistant Director for Administration and Finance (search underway)
Team Charter: Facilitate the establishment of effective contractual arrangements with outside vendors for hardware and software. Work with the I/T Leadership Team to establish contracting priorities and risk management approaches. Negotiate the legal terms and conditions of contracts. Support team leaders, project leaders, and other staff in negotiating business terms and conditions. Educate I/T staff about evolving contracting practices. Develop measurement and tracking mechanisms. Design and implement process improvements.
Assignments/Skills: Intellectual property counsels, software acquisition coordinators, business manager
Team Leader: To be designated
Team Members: Paul Heffernan, Karen Hersey, Connie Mitchell, Alex Prengel, others to be added
The MIT Computer Connection (MCC) is an enterprise operated within Information Systems to maximize the value MIT and its schools, areas, departments, laboratories, centers, faculty, students, and staff realize from its reseller agreements with vendors of office and personal computers, peripherals, and software.
The MCC has not been involved in the planning for ongoing work teams and roles that is documented in this report, because it has been participating in the Institute's Supplier Consolidation reengineering efforts. During this period, all the MIT Computer Connection work underway in IS is continuing, i.e., sales of microcomputer and workstation hardware, software, peripherals, supplies, and upgrades, with its current organization structure.
The goal of MIT's Supplier Consolidation reengineering effort is to analyze MIT's buying patterns across product groups and consolidate the commodities or procedures wherever improvements can be effected. In October 1994 the Supplier Consolidation team selected desktop-devices as one of its three initial product areas for further investigation. Since that time, the MCC has been engaged in designing and piloting a new approach for desktop computer acquisitions. In June, the MCC ran the first pilot Save-A-Bundle sale. More recently, the second pilot, a Back-to-School sale, focused on serving students.
The members of the Save-A-Bundle implementation team are Sally Plamondon, Christine Cavanna, and Gerry Greenhow. The team is currently analyzing the results of the pilots and preparing recommendations for the Supplier Consolidation team and the Reengineering Steering Committee about next steps.