Analysis Meeting
2008-02-01 -- Held the meeting among consultants and team members / manager. Board notes are attached to this page.
Laptop Loaner Program
People
Ryan Flanagan (ryanf@mit.edu) principally involved, supported by John Guy (jtguy@mit.edu) and soon to be Tommy Smith.
The team members plan to cross-train and understudy each other, as well as provide scrum support during peak periods. The actual work required at peak load
Funding / Sponsorship
Phil Long (longpd@mit.edu) and Vijay Kumar (vkumar@mit.edu), once of IS&T Academic Computing, now of OEIT, are indirect "sponsors" of the program. Jim cane (sp? email?) of OEIT is going to become more involved, according to Ryan.
Demand Generation
1. Courses 1.00 and 1.167 (I believe) are the main clients of the program. 25 to 40 PCs per course. Demand is stable from year to year. A certain number of students in these classes use their own equipment. Others take the loaned laptop and use it instead of their own. Some course software is PC-only and many students went the Mac route . (Parallels may make this dual-platform problem much more manageable; the jury is out.)
2. Phil Long and Vijay are channels for ad-hoc requests for small classes, academic conferences, etc. These are short-term demands for up to 10 PCs.
3. Additional events occur during IAP and there are Summer Institutes.
In general, once people know the loaner pool exists, they pursue the opportunity with a certain avidity.
Products
1. Inventory was said to be about 75 PCs; most or 3+ years old; considerable wear-and-tear -- the students really beat on the machines.
Processes and Artifacts
1. the laptop-request@mit.edu mailing list is a channel for request generation. The membership of that list is currently bmurphy, longpd, ryanf, vkumar, and LIST: acis-projects
ACIS-projects@mit.edu is a redirection to acis-projects@help.mit.edu, which is an RT feeder list. The RT queue that it powers is AC::ACIS::Projects (https://help.mit.edu/Search/Results.html?Query=Queue%20=%20'AC::ACIS::Projects'%20AND%20(Status%20=%20'open'%20OR%20Status%20=%20'new'%20OR%20Status%20=%20'stalled')) Evidently the OEIT folks review and approve requests, and Ryan is dispatched to fill them.
2. Inventory is kept by Ryan in a personal Excel spreadsheet someplace.
Issues Surfaced
(in no particular order, but as they came out in the discussion)
1. PMATs came to be considered unusable as an inventory tool, leading to the locally stored Excel spreadsheet acting as the shadow inventory system. ---> ASSET MGMT solution needed.
2. N42 Front Desk has been used for equipment checkout and checkin but it's unsecure drop-off and check-in. ---> MOVE ASSETS to a more secure place, such as Building 26, an IS&T space that is quite secure and actually more central to the students on campus, albeit not really "staffed" and thus appointments would be necessary.
3. Academic Computing / OEIT have a loose but important oversight on the administration of loan requests. John Kane [sp?] of OEIT wants to re-engineer the program.
4. Current pool of PCs is old and is wearng out.
5. Check out process wants to be improved with a Bar Code reader and student ID swiper, to create a quick connection between the computer and the student receiving it. John Guy helps Ryan during the bulk checkout process, where a big pile of laptops is brought to a class session where they are all handed out. ---> the Admin Desktop process is a successful example of asset management using the bar code reader idea. The Admin Desktop program involves a newly rewritten Filemaker DB of some kind.
6. Expansion of the loaner pool? Anne says there is a funding model that drives it. [where is it documented? -- ed.]
7. Cost Recovery possible from the conferences and other non-academic uses.
8. Students are seen to be gaming the system a little, taking the laptop loaner for their course when they don't really need it. Could be a "my Mac does not run the necessary PC software" either "at all" or "at the necessary level of performance."