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The new reality is, "If you build it for me, with me, and it doesn't make me think, I may come." The tried approach of starting with a new piece of technology and developing a service from it is giving way to understanding a person, understaing understanding their need, and designing a solution for it, technology's best efforts to the contrary not withstanding.
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- enhance IT services delivered to faculty and students
- expand Departmental Services
- streamline software delivery process
- define and deliver software stack in support of GIRs
- improve email/calendaring options
- provide easy access to software tools
- ensure services worthy of MIT
- become home to the strategy for the public student computing experience at MIT
- deliver Information Security and Privacy Policy 1.0
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If something doesn’t actually help people get their work done, it isn’t useful, no matter how cool it is. Why would a project team want CSS members inserted into their team? Can we convince them that we add value? Let’s enumerate the values we can add. (CSS integration) Do we have individual staff members who can represent all aspects of CSS (training, usability, support) to a project team? (CSS integration) With less management turnover, we’d have a hope of finishing well-intentioned initiatives, instead of restarting them over and over, as we do now. What is the process to get these services from CSS? Do you have to ask each manager for staff? Each team? We should have an entry point. |
Development of the CSS Workforce of the Future
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DRAFT:
Technology has thoroughly reshaped the way we do business... Today's technology has given all of us unprecedented freedom and the power to access information whenever and wherever we need it. Never before have we seen the extent of making sure people have the knowledge, technology, tools, capital, time, and physical space to generate superior results. \ [W\]orkers \ [will\] seek more elasticity in where and when they work, collaborative, real-time technologies that boost knowledge sharing and encourage the free flow of ideas will become more essential. No matter what new technologies develop, the most important skills will remain the ability to learn and to think critically. Many skills treasured by previous generations were made obsolete by computer software, and so were the workers who lacked the flexibility to adapt. We cannot know which jobs will be superseded by technology in the future; we can only know, without a doubt, that some will be. And the reverberations will be felt in an ever more diverse workforce.
Excerpted from BusinessWeek of October 25, 2007. _http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2007/ca20071025_473242.htm_
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Resource planning and allocation are part of our daily work. Priorities shift and we need to have strong processes and communication across CSS and IS&T in order to accomodate accommodate changes in service needs. In addition, the tools we use to execute these processes need to be able to "talk to one and other", so to speak. If the processes are isolated, the result will be a lack of understanding and inability to work towards common goals.
- create cohesion between teams and functions
- revamp of metrics and business processes
- ticketing tool evaluation and integration
- look at other tools that will reduce manual or redundant work
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More informal social events like the cruise. A lot of our repetitive work at the Help Desk comes from clients not learning (or being aware of) the tools to help themselves. Many prefer to chat, humans being social animals. I thought RT had only been here three years – not six. RT is currently being used to track metrics and ownership of cases. These compete with each other. We’ll get better results for both ends if we separate the two. Align “build” project process from AUX and DCAD through DS support. How can we communicate the boring, redundant, and mind numbing work to a broader audience – to some one who might have a solution? How can the solution-makers be rewarded so that more people will chip in? Cohesion is easier if people can mingle more… |
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RT should generate priority levels, i.e. if email is down, why can’t RT notify managers and support people through phone calls, etc? Also, tracking issues across teams is nearly non-existent. |
Understanding of CSS Costs
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- improved understanding of unit costs
- pilot new revenue models
- design business process improvements
- develop understanding of risk management and associated costs
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What are the products and services? Cost measurements need to span the entire life cycle of the product/project question. It’s easy to look at the transaction the client has with one group, and miss how that impacts other group. Only one: customer satisfaction. Understanding costs is hard in a culture that values cleverness and elegance more than simplicity and profit. It should be easier to get funding for a small scale project (say <1K) without jumping through a lot of hoops. |