I/T Service Process Planning

Work-In-Progress, as of August 15, 1995

Work underway as of August 15

1. All the Service work underway in IS to keep things running will continue, including:
   • operate mainframe
   • maintain mainframe operating system
   • maintain administrative servers
   • maintain administrative databases
   • operate MITnet
   • maintain network services
   • operate Athena distributed servers
   • maintain Athena system software
   • maintain Athena clusters
   • service Athena workstations and customers' pcs
   • provide maintenance service agreements for pcs and workstations
   • operate 5ESS, vmail, and ICE-9
   • maintain wire and cable plant, cable tv
   • maintain designated administrative applications
   • coordinate disaster recovery planning, testing, and efforts
   
   

   Although this work will continue in the future, the challenge we now faces is to explore new ways of doing this work that will enable us to meet the I/T support requirements resulting from the reengineering of MIT's core business processes.
   
   

2. A planning team called serve-it began working on 7/12/95 and will continue. The charter of this team is to develop the service process transition plan. Serve-it will be meeting as a group on Wednesday afternoons through August and into September. The issues the team is addressing include:
   • what work is in the service process?
   • what will teams look like in the service process?
   • how will we do initial team assignments (including appointment of team leaders)?
   • boundaries, interfaces, handoffs to other processes and organizations
   • critical priorities for the next six months
   • burning issues
   
   

   The members of the team are: Mike Barker , Matt Braun, Tom Coppeto , Karen Fortoul, Louise Keohane, Dave Lambert, Linda Lancaster, Carol LeClair, Marilyn McMillan, Roger Roach, and Jeff Schiller .
   

   As of 8/14, the team

   • documented and reviewed current services
   • refined the service process description outlined by trans-it in October 1994
   • drafted a team leadership strategy for service teams
   • taken a first cut at estimating effort levels in current service work
   • began exploring different models for structuring teams doing service work.

   Copies of team notes can viewed in the serve-it public discuss meeting on menelaus. The team mailing list is serve-it@mit.edu
   

Upcoming work August 15 - December 15

1. "Back to School" is coming soon and a lot of on-going service efforts reach a peak during the late August through September time period.
   
   
2. More administrative databases will be coming online and moving from test to active production use.
   
   
3. Telephone service will be extended to Whitehead.
   
   
4. Application maintenance work will get underway to build bridges and feeds between the new SAP financial system and the legacy administrative applications .
   
   
5. Jointly with others, the strategy and plans to connect all remaining administrative offices to MITnet must be settled. Implementation must begin.
   
   
6. Several service-impact projects are looming this fall, including TechMail to Eudora migration, PGP support infrastructure pilot, TAP/TQF, Electronic Catalog pilot, installation of servers for the SAP project, etc.
   

Some responsibilities for Service work change as of August 21

• Current groups continue doing that work under the leadership of current managers and team leaders. We expect there will be changes in the structure and roles of these groups during the period 8/15-12/15.
• Also initially, budget authority for those groups remains as it currently has been in the IS department structure, under the continuing auspices of the designated members of the IS Finance team. We expect the cutover to a new accounting structure for the new framework to occur later in the fall, coordinated by the IS Finance team
• Thirdly, administrative support for these groups remains as it currently is. Staff who need supplies and other administrative assistance, for instance, in the upcoming weeks should plan to get them wherever they get them today.
• We recognize that staff doing this work also may wear hats in other processes.
  

Next steps in service transition planning

1. As a result of the work of the serve-it planning team, we will be restructuring work teams within the support process in the fall. We may form some new service teams - both standing teams and project teams. We may combine some existing teams. It is likely that some existing teams doing work within the service process will remain relatively intact through the autumn.
   
   
2. We will devise a strategy for defining, publicizing, and filling roles on service teams.
   
   
3. We will put in place some new mechanisms for promoting coordination and communication within and among teams doing service work.
   
   
4. We will set up planning efforts to settle how service work to maintain electronic classrooms and operate software license servers moves smoothly into the new framework.
   
   
5. We will work jointly on efforts to resolve interfaces, overlaps, handoffs, and boundaries with other I/T processes.