11 am, N42-286, CSS Managers 

Agenda

  • Hot Round Table items (15 minutes)
    • Jeff: clients asking for news on rates, and Jeff can't say because he's waiting for the rate plan from the Virtual Server Service.  Jeff wants to raise his rates anyway, in smaller increments and more often than in the past (which may have been a multiple year skip), perhaps in line with MIT annual budget process.
    • Jeff: Grade20 extract has changed and some fields have changed, breaking alignment with some other filemaker programs used that eat that data; to do this fix work, Grade20 in the new format may need to be given to them, triggering sensitive data issues.  Wilson: the solution before was to completely scramble the data.  Followup up with Mark Damian to find out the holistic approach.  Steve Lerman will have something to say about iti.
    • Chris: DUE 50-50% split position is currently on hold waiting for DUE to complete a position approval process.  Steve Burke working on it.  So we'll see.
    • Wilson: some of the cost savings idea seem radical, but hey, they're proposals.  Gratifying that our "personal well-being" was a major filter on the ideas submitted.  Creative thinking in personnel matters will be essential to achieving savings rates of 5% more each year for three years.
    • Wilson: organizational review news: massive amounts of data has been collected by Jerry.  Now he will review things with Terry Stone to socialize the rationale for decision-making.  Deans, VPs, other Sr Mgmt need to be behind any changes.  Likely to be an All-Hands on January 20 or 21st for the personal announcements of the plan.
    • Wilson: Exchange thing -- next steps include developing the downstream effects of what will happen if Exchange goes live.  The big question we need to have an answer for is "Email for the community", not just "calendaring".  We need to have a story about Email/Calendaring.
    • Wilson: Winter Project Priorities list was mailed for confirmation to VPStaff yesterday, and that list will go around to css-managers today for review.
  • More on Cost Cutting (15 minutes)
    • Taeminn is in charge of the overall project.  Rob is the CSS point person.
    • Work we can do while a central list of ideas is being gathered is to analyze out team businesses to see what is what with respect to services delivered vs the cost of doing them.  How would we know how much we could actually harvest if we change the way things are or what is done.
    • There is a central server space on Sparkler for the aggregating of ideas from all the directorates
  • XDPP visit by Mark Wiklund, report out...
    • followup with internal team managers and project managers about pubs engagement with project managers.
    • want a periodic process. 
    • Kate: met with Rob yesterday -- discussed the evolving project engagement process.
    • Waiting to be contacted won't be helpful.  we need to take charge and engage them with defining our requirements. 
    • What is the FBC view into the projects?  Can't see very much time allocation.
    • December 5th meeting should include an overview of the whole project milieu and not just how to put projects into Daptiv.
    • Wilson: Daptiv use -- I want everyone to use Daptiv at level 3, with these attributes: 
      • project members
      • list handoffs and deliverables
      • overall milestones
      • some tool, not necessarily daptiv, for detailed project plans, resource commitments, etc.
      • ISDA approach shows all the projects to all the managers, for instance, and we could adopt this practice ourselves.  Wilson would like us to catch up to the ISDA example without going to time sheets. 
      • Jeff Reed noted that there isn't enough support for Daptiv in the organization, around reporting development in particular.
  • Performance Objectives (30 minutes) -- come with an understanding of how your four or five performance objectives align with the Operating Plan or the Service Quality Goals plan of 2008. 
    • I don't want to see just the list of 109 activities. 
    • I want to see personnel development activities, etc., that are part of grooming the team you are leading.  How are each of you helping to make CSS a better place?  Cross-team goals... how say Jana is collaborating more with Barbara to improve relationships across CSS.
    • Don't put items that are wishlists -- put items that can be measured, have impact, etc.  It's not just projects, but people development, communications, etc.
    • Back to costs: it makes little sense to axe training (since it's an investment in our people) rather than axe a project whose money could be recovered to do different work.  It's important to sustain the investment in our people.
    • I would like to have you come prepared at a one-on-one coming up with a list of goals. 
    • We need to look at the 109 for the ones that pertain, then edit them down and make something of them. 
    • We need to make a Living Plan and we have decided it will be editable text in the wiki, (not the Word document).   The wiki will be easily exported for attractiveness in Word or PDF format. 
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