I/T Support Process Planning

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

Cecilia d'Oliveira, Director, I/T Support

Preamble

The I/T Support process exists to help the MIT community make effective use of I/T products and services. The Support process was described in the March 15, 1995 I/T Transformation announcement to the MIT I/T community.

The Support process is NOT a traditional, hierarchical organization. Work within the Support process goes on within "standing" teams and "project" teams. Individuals working within the Support process have work assignments on one or more teams and may also have assignments on teams outside of the Support process. Planning work is now underway (described below) to articulate the team structure of the new Support process.

The Support process is "led" by a process leader, aka Director, I/T Support. The process leader is NOT a traditional, hierarchical management role. The primary responsibilities of the Support process leader are to:

• establish the structure of the Support process (i.e. teams)
• gather resources for teams (i.e. money, people, space, etc.)
• guide the performance of teams (coaching, advising, feedback, etc.)
• promote process improvements within the process
• resolve problems and run interference, as necessary
• promote effective team practices
• manage the "portfolio" of Support projects
• coordinate with other processes

Work underway as of 8/15

1. Information Systems serves the MIT community with a broad range of valued I/T products and services. Although planning activities are now underway that will transition I/T support to the new process framework this autumn, it is important to recognize that the on-going support work in IS will continue during the transition period. This includes:
   • help desk services
   • consulting services
   • training services
   • publication services
   • making the community aware of I/T products and services
   • product evaluations and recommendations
   • support of user groups
   • fee-based support services for targeted customer groups
   • providing customer feedback to other I/T processes
   • Mobsters support of Re-Engineering projects.
     
   
   

   Although this work will continue in the future, the challenge we now face 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 support-it began work on 7/24/95 and will continue into September. The charter of this team is to develop the support process transition plan. Support-it will be meeting as a group on Monday mornings. The issues to be addressed by the team include:
   • review of current work in the support process
   • criteria for restructuring work in the support process
   • what standing teams and project teams will exist in the support process
   • how the redesigned help process will fit within the support process
   • process for 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: Jeanne Cavanaugh, Joanne Costello, Kevin Cunningham, Cecilia d'Oliveira, Barbara Goguen, Valerie Hartt, Louise Keohane, Linda Lancaster, Joanne Larrabee, Marilyn McMillan, Harold Pakulat, George Petrowsky, Naomi Schmidt, and Carol Wood.
   

   As of 8/14, the team had

   • documented and reviewed current support work across IS including a first cut at estimating effort levels in current support work.
   • discussed criteria for restructuring support work.
   • brainstormed current support problems.

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

3. The Help-it team is making preparations to move from redesign to pilot. The charter of this team is to implement a new, redesigned I/T help desk process. I/T Transformation team identified the need for a new help process as a critical element in I/T Transition. Over the next one to two years reengineering will result in the need to connect and support 1000-2000 new users on the MIT campus network. We also know that reengineering will result in the rollout of 5-6 substantial, new network-based applications which will be used by up to 8000 people in the MIT community as part of their daily work. From a customer's perspective MIT's current help desk environment is fragmented and will not adequately support these future requirements. These factors make it urgent that we implement a new process this calendar year in order to meet MIT's needs over the next two to three years.
   

   The Help-it team has been hard at work for a number of months and is now making preparations to pilot a portion of the new help desk process between mid-September and late-October. The goal of this first pilot is to test the problem identification and resolution aspects of the redesign in a real-world environment using three existing IS help desks, the Micro Help Line, the Network Help Desk, and the O&S Help Desk. Staff from Network Support Services, Consulting Services, and Client Services are being asked to assist in the pilot by staffing the new help desk during pilot. Both full-time and part-time (student) staff are participating in pilot. This staffing assignment is strictly temporary.
   

   In addition to testing the process design, the pilot has several deliverables. First, preliminary training programs for help desk staff. The first-cut at training will be a program intended for anyone staffing the help desk, including part-time staff (primarily students) and full-time staff. This training program includes professional skills, team building exercises, and an orientation to the new help desk process. In addition, a series of information technology tools are being recommended. The first technology deliverable will be an on-line tracking tool for use by all IT help desk staff to track help desk calls. Recommendations for other tools, such as an IVR (Interactive Voice Response), are also included. Recommendations will be made for staffing levels, job descriptions, performance measures, and process metrics. Recommendations about how to make staff assignments will be consistent with the overall approach to making team assignments in Phase 2, as it evolves.

Upcoming support work 8/15 - 12/15

1. "Back to School" is coming soon and a lot of on-going support efforts reach a peak during the late August through September time period. This includes Athena user accounts and Athena consulting, residential network support, voice mail accounts, and IS participation in R/O week activities. This year we will also be supporting the MCC's Save-A-Bundle 2 in this timeframe.
   
   
2. The Help-it team will continue pilot preparations in anticipation of conducting its first pilot between September 11 and October 20. In addition, the team will be planning a second pilot later this fall to test the self-help aspects of the new help process. This part of the process is critical to success of the overall design. A pilot involving one or more central office help desks will also be planned.
   

   Implementation planning for the new help desk process has already begun. Implementation involves taking the design that has been piloted and rolling it out on a wide-scale, production basis. During this period the team will continue preparation work (working closely with the Support process leader) for a late fall implementation. We currently anticipate phasing in the new design between early November and the end of the calendar year. Prior to the roll-out of the new help process, staff will be enlisted in a series of training programs that will introduce them to the new process and help them to build the skills necessary to work on the new help desk. Some training programs are intended for all help process staff. On-going training is a critical aspect of the new help process.
   
   The list of implementation activities and target completion dates are included below.

   • Deliver series of "top priority" training programs mid Oct - mid Nov
   • Begin move from existing IT tools to new IT tools mid Oct - late Nov
   • Begin on-going training programs late Nov ->
   • Begin IS transition to new help process mid Nov -> late Dec
   • Advertise "New" Help Desk start of 1996
   
   
3. Other projects and events which will have I/T support impact are looming this fall, including TechMail to Eudora migration, Oracle rollout on campus, PGP support infrastructure pilot, introduction of software library service for HP users, and Microsoft's rollout of Windows 95.
   
   
4. Support requirements of reengineering applications will increase as the first instances of TAP and the Electronic Catalog are made available for community use.
   
   
5. Jointly with others, the strategy and plans to connect all remaining administrative offices to MITnet must be settled. Implementation must begin.
   
   
6. We will launch a support project to plan and implement the basic technology training component of the ReE Training & Development teamOs work.
   

Some responsibilities for Support work change as of August 21

1. Support work in today's IS departments will move under the influence of the support process leader as of Monday, August 21. Initially, this means:
   • 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 may also have assignments in other processes.
     
   
   
2. The I/T Support process leader becomes the Help-it team sponsor. As the Help-it team prepares its pilot and begins planning for implementation, it is an opportune time for the sponsorship of the help-it team to move to the Support process leader.
   

Next steps in Support transition planning

1. As a result of the work of the support-it planning team and the help-it team, we will be restructuring work teams within the support process in the fall. We will form some new support teams - both standing teams and project teams. We may combine some existing teams. It is likely that some existing teams doing work within the support process will remain relatively intact through the autumn. We plan to announce a description of the new team framework within the support process in October. This will include the publication of team charters and, in some cases, new position descriptions.
   
   
2. We will devise a strategy for defining, publicizing, and filling roles on support teams. Staff members will be asked to express their interest in being affiliated with one or more of these teams before new assignments are made.
   
   
3. We will put in place some new mechanisms for promoting coordination and communication within and among teams doing support work and teams doing service work.
   
   
4. We will work to resolve interfaces, overlaps, handoffs, and boundaries with other I/T processes. A number of issues have been identified that need to be worked this fall including service/support interfaces (for electronic classrooms, software library services, user accounts, network installations, etc.) and the need to define acceptability criteria for new products moving from the delivery process into the service and support processes.