Background

In January 2008, Don Montabana, Anne Denna and Rob Smyser began a series of Friday weekly meetings dubbed the "CSS HQ Strategy Group".  The charter in FY2008 is to get CSS Lines of Business onto sound management footing. 

Board notes from the 1/25/2008 meeting give a view of what lines of business we mean to study, what we want to accomplish, what work products we want to create, and a sense of some goals to reach by the end of the effort.

Lines of Business to Study

1. DITR businesses
   1. SLA
   2. Admin Desktop
   3. Admin IT
   4. Athena, including Laptop Loaner Program
2. Service Center - Hardware and Software Repair
3. Software Licensing
4. Training
5. Mobile Device Services

Tentative Schedule

Checklist of Progress

Issues to Raise

• Do LOBs have databases, and if so, what are they, where are they, who can get in, etc, what's  tracked, how does reporting occur, etc.)  Issues of Inventory, Client-to-Computer matching, overall asset management.
• How much hidden work goes on in addition to the unhidden work, and if not zero then for whom, by whom, how long does it all take?  how much rework happens?
• Definition of Workflows -- how carefully is work tracked as it's done.  Is it countable? Reportable?  is it repeatable? (are there process checklists, for instance, for SLA visits to client computers)
• Succession plans / cross-training / understudies
• Performance standards / measures / business drivers
• Mechanisms for oversight (trust by verify) by folks external to the team
• What do we need to bill per LOB in order to break even?  are we losing our shirts by even being in the business (and maybe that's okay).  What are all the true costs being piled onto the recovery model, including FTE, related costs, indirect costs, etc.)
• What's the current difference between how things are supposed to work and how they actually do work?

How We Plan to Go About It

1. Anne will create DCAD-style Rate Models in Excel.  These include detailed costs (specific FTE, etc.), units of work produced and fte allocated per line of business, etc.  Revenue potential is computed, costs are tabulated, and then we can decide how much needs to be charged to actually recover costs from revenue-generating businesses.
2. Rob will draw Process / Workflow Diagrams of how the work occurs.
3. The team will meet with team leaders and managers from each area and see about getting the information out.
4. We'll work on several LOBs at once in parallel, scrumming against the backlog rather than waterfalling from one LOB to the next across the year.

Desired Outcomes

1. A suite of work documents that provide tangible proof we know what we are about and could impart it to future versions of ourselves in a reliable way.
2. cost models that can be used to accurately forecast revenue potential in the current year using actual data.
3. tools inventory, listing details about the databases and other systems we completely by quietly depend on.
4. improved work tracking regimens, including for example adding TimeWorked to RT cases and filling it in.
5. business plans for each LOB that serve to explain their continued existence or need to be expanded.  Elements include annual profit & loss picture, break-even modeling, market share analysis, quality of service promises to customers, workflow diagrams in the Lean tradition, billing policies and procedures.
6. working assessment of risks that have.  This from the discussion of how vulnerable the laptop program is, say, to theft from within the building.

Goals We Know About

• Charge the same amount for work done by DITR SLA folks and by PC Service, so there's no false incentives to use one over the other.  The difference is not in the work done but in the style of client relationship (SLAs being cozier and closer to the clients' home, PC service being more "auto repair shop" in style"). 
• Consistent "rules of engagement" memos per line of business, documenting in one sheet what relationship the client has entered in to with us and how to get in touch with precisely the right person to get what they need.
• Benchmark against industry standards for process performance, rates, etc.  (Can we be more efficient or can we leave a certain process alone since it's doing as well as it can or better than any alternative?)