DLT Direction Setting

Friday morning, we had our fourth meeting in a series on DLT direction setting. (John Palmer asked a good question as we were finishing up Friday: what do we call these meetings? I'm calling them "Direction Setting" meetings for now until I come up with something catchier: got any suggestions?)

And that brings up a related question of what this blog is dedicated to: Frankly, I had no idea when I created it what the heck I was going to write about, but that seems to have taken care of itself with the topic being DLT organizational development for the most part - a journal of sorts of the team's work and progress.

On Friday, each of the groups assigned to our six goals reported back with recommendations, we reviewed these and came up with action items. I've tried to summarize the recommendations here but I'll also collate the original recommendations and circulate so we don't lose any of those. Here's what we came up with:

Goal #1: Develop a culture of collaboration and team-work by integrating more fully with ITS
Janis reported out for this team. There were three broad recommendations:

1. Establish regular meetings with other ITS units.
2. Look for collaborative projects with those units. (Some examples of these were: Digital Repository development, LDAP & Web Access, Help Desk collaboration, Inventory Management, Service Oriented Architecture, Developers Listserv, as well as examples that directly relate to our Project Management and Operational Efficiencies goals.)
3. Communicate what DLT does to other ITS units.

We came up with the following immediate action items to support these goals:

1. Janis will take the lead in setting up an initial "information sharing" session with Kurt Baker, our CSS IT consultant, and the ASET Emerging Technologies group. The goals of this session are to look for mutual areas of interest and to establish some channels for "project matching" with the rest of ITS.
2. Maryam will take the lead in proposing the establishment of an institutional-wide Developer's listserv to support communication among that community.

Goal #2: Strengthen our partnership with the Library to better serve students, faculty and staff.
Jeff reported out for this team. The recommendations were:

1. Survey the UL for feedback on how DLT and I-TECH can best serve them.
2. Look for ways for DLT to be more actively involved in Library activities, and have more face-to-face time with our Library constituents, both at UP and the CCL.
3. Establish more regular meetings with I-TECH.
4. Establish project management processes in collaboration with I-TECH.

Immediate action items:

1. Mairéad and Peggy will organize a DLT/I-TECH meeting to discuss issues of communication, shared work, focus, etc.

Goal #3: Look for operational efficiencies and invest in R&D for new technologies.

Mark reported for this group; the group had realized that there were some immediate actions that could be taken as well as ones that would take more time and more data to make informed decisions. The immediate actions were:

1. Review the possibility of providing a link to the ITS knowledge base with the possibility of creating library specific faq's. Look for confusion issues over things such as email setting in Eudora and others.
2. Continue the process of evaluating the conversion of Meeting Maker to Oracle calendaring.
3. Convene a group to look at moving to PSU mail.
4. Convene a group to look at moving network support to TNS.
5. Develop a centralized repository for documentation. This would have to come with an editorial process to group documentation so it can be found reasonably well and also browsed for content.
6. Attempt to move some responsibility for ongoing maintenance of systems to the Libraries or I-Tech. (In our discussion the issue of application/software decommisioning also was raised.)

It was agreed that actions 2, 3, and 4 would be covered in the UL IT Services group that is in the process of being set up to analyze the provision of IT services, such as email, to the UL.
With regard to the knowledge base and documentation actions, we agreed to put together a team to come up with a plan for these. The team is Justin, Joni, John, Peggy, Lance, and Tun. (Did we decide who was going to take the lead for this?)

The second part of this goal -- "invest in R&D for new technologies" led to an energized discussion on whether we had the capacity to do that. (An example of resources issues: DLT has nine technicians to support 1700 desktops whereas the ITS CLC group has 30 for 2000 machines.) We concluded that we needed a meeting dedicated to this topic to fully discuss.

Goal #4: Commit to professional development, training and information sharing.
Peggy reported out for this group. They did such a nice job on their report that I'm going to reproduce all of it here (my favorite team ;)

Mission: Commit to professional development, training and information sharing.

Vision:
* DLT should create a climate of support and encouragement for professional development within our group.
* Training and professional development should be in line with goals stated in SRDP or to fulfill job requirements. Release time should be granted to pursue development activities.

Action Items:
1. DLT should pursue a conversation with other IT departments to find out how they handle training, share information and to find out what conferences/meetings they find useful. Also find out what training classes their employees are attending and if DLT could join in their training. (For example, if they have someone coming in to teach JAVA, we could join in on their training. Possibly lowering costs for both departments)
2. DLT should identify and create awareness of other groups that may be a source of pertinent information, e.g. Network of People.
3. A practical environment should be created for those completing training so that they can practice and apply their skills.
4. Information sharing sessions should be held on a regular basis, early in the work day so as not to interrupt other work. Agenda for these sessions should be published in advance.
5. Supervisors should ensure an appropriate rotation of training opportunities.
6. Information sharing should be encouraged and recognized as professional development whether it is a presentation delivered to a conference group or sharing information learned at a conference within DLT.
7. DLT should commit to participating in Library forums such as the Tech Update or other opportunities that may present themselves.

Possible obstacles:
* Money
* Scheduling conflicts; managing work load
* Finding available and appropriate courses

Action items:
Mairéad suggested a permanent DLT team to identify appropriate professional development and training opportunities, and to establish "career paths" of sorts. She seemed more enthusiastic about this than the group as a whole.

Goal #5: Implement project management in collaboration with our Library partners.
Ben reported out for this team. The recommendations were:

1. Organize an Introduction to Project Management or Project Management 101 for DLT and Library (I-TECH partners to begin with.)
2. Determine project management approach (principles, requirements, toolkit, etc.)
3. Consider appointment of dedicated project management hire.
4. Consider project management training for DLT staff. (This links to professional development objectives, Objective #3.)

There was a lot of discussion and agreement in the group that project management as a general approach needed to be supported from the top down in all of our organizations. The action items here were:

1. Mairéad to look into possibility of dedicated project management hire.
2. Tun will take the first recommendation and present a project management 101. We can propose this to I-TECH when we meet.

Goal #6: Make DLT a "preferred workplace".
Justin reported out for this group. The vision for this goal is to "Foster a professional atmosphere, incorporating courtesy and respect for all." The recommendations fell into four categories - Facilities, Communications, Professional and Personal Development Concerns, and Climate Concerns.

Under Facilities, a critical concern was expressed about the fact that we don't have anywhere to store desktop machines and equipment, and it ends up clogging the hallways during the summer especially.

The action items from these recommendations and discussions were:
1. Mairéad to consider recommendation under Facilities and Climate.
2. We agreed that recommendations under "Professional and Personal Development" were covered under that goal.
3. Mairéad suggested we dedicate some of an upcoming all staff meeting to discussion of communication issues.