Extremely rough transcription of brainstorm

Q: What are the guiding principles we should use to vet the draft list of IS&T Core Products and Services?

• Is maintained
• Promotes collaboration across MIT
• Critical to MIT mission
• Enhances workspace -- helps people study, teach, admin. and collaborable
• All other things equal, should serve the many, not just a few
• We help people use the service
• Responds to community need
• It should also be needs-driven
• "Most" DLCS don't want to do it OR were told they can't do it
• IS&T is not the sole provider of central IT services
• Is IS&T at least a "good" provider of the service?
• Sustainable
• Reduces "cost" in total across MIT -- might be financial cost, or could be other qualitiative factors
• Guides prioritization, for example, research computing inside IS&T vs. NOT inside IS&T vs. SOMEWHAT inside IS&T
• Should not be stated in terms of "product" name
• Easy to explain and easy to use
• Practical (this needs defintion)
• Has explicit policy, governance and a roadmap
• Predictable and consistent -- no surprises!
• Reliable
• Measurable
• Keeps "current" with technology trends
• Represents "best practices" in some sense
• Is legal

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  Distilling the brainstorm

We then decided to try and fine tune this list into a short, crisp and well-defined list.  We want to complete the sentence "A Core IS&T Service Is..."

We produced this list:

• critical to MIT's mission
• sustainable and scalable
• practical
• maintainable, supportable, reliable and predictable
• cost-effective
• governed, roadmapped, resourced, etc.

Underlined words were open to interpretation, and we flagged them for further semantic analysis.

And then found ourselves in a cul-de-sac, at which point we decided that what we were really listing were the delivery goals for Core Services (see below) should be.

Goals for Core Services

A core service should be...

• cost effective

• easy to use

• effectively managed

• explainable

• justifiable

• measurable

• practical

• reliable

• scalable

• secure

• supportable

• visible

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  Finally, we reached the land of Guiding Principles ...

... by returning to the document attached to this wiki space entitled IS&T Responsibilities.