May 2007 Archives

Led by Ann Snowman, Head of Access Services, a combined ITS and UL team recently completed an analysis and made recommendations on whether certain IT services would best be provided by DLT or as enterprise ITS services. The team members were Joni Barnoff (ITS, DLT); Kurt Baker (ITS, CSS); Andrew Calvin (UL, I-TECH); Jonathan Holman (ITS TLT); Henry Piscotta (UL, Art & Architecture); Bob O’Connor (ITS AIS); Matt O’Connor (UL, Wilkes-Barre); Mark Webster (ITS DLT); and Sara Whildin (UL, Delaware). If you read the project charter, you'll see that this team did an excellent job of keeping within scope and schedule and were rigorous in their analyses.

The report is now available with recommendations on five services: Email, Calendar, Desktop Reimaging, Help Desk and Networking. Next steps are to further investigate the recommendations in the report and consider migration and other issues. More to follow on that.

This morning I gave a short update on DLT at the Libraries' Tech Update meeting. Here's the presentation. I'd love to get feedback: Is this what people wanted to hear? Other topics that could be covered? Questions, comments, concerns?

When I started in DLT in November, one of the first things I did was schedule 1on1s with DLT staff, and from those discussions we came up with and agreed on six goals for DLT to focus on. In June, I'll be here six months and would like to follow up with another 1x1 to touch base and see how you think things are going. If you think you already see enough or too much of me ("Impossible!" I hear you say), don't feel you have to do this, but if you'd find it useful, please let Deb know and she'll work on the scheduling. And if you can't wait until June, you know where I am (some of the time, when I'm not in back-to-back meetings!).

Been awhile since I did an update on how things are progressing with our six goals. I take that as a good sign - things have been moving along, but it's time for a check-in.

Goal #1: Develop a culture of collaboration and team-work by integrating more fully with ITS.

This goal obviously very much aligns with Kevin's principles of "leveraging the strength of being ITS" and "developing a culture of teamwork and collaboration" and naturally includes our colleagues in ITECH and the Libraries too. We've started three new cooperative projects/initiatives: a Shib pilot implementation (Renee Shuey, Lead), Social Networking Tools (Andrew Calvin, lead), and repositories groups (Jack Orlandi, Lead). If the leads are reading this right now, could you post a short update?

We've also been having discussions with ITS CSS on how we can best combine Help Desk and Support resources for the University Libraries, and are meeeting with AIS and Emerging Technologies next week to talk about Service Oriented Architectures and how we collaborate in that space.

Goal #2: Strengthen our partnership with the Library to better serve students, faculty and staff.

We've had a series of Identity Presentations now - you can access many of the presentations here. The presentations I was able to attend were really valuable and folks did a great job presenting on their topic. I'm hoping we can continue to do these and use them both as way to keep each other informed as well as gain experience presenting. We've also had some excellent discussions about how we work together during this process and more to follow on that in Phase II. I'm meeting with the Strengthening Partnerships team (Sylvia, Jennifer, Peggy, Jack and Jeff) on Monday to talk about next steps.

We've also been very active in the planning discussions for the Knowledge Commons in the last while.

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

The UL IT Services Analysis team, led by Ann Snowman, has been meeting for about six weeks now and are finalizing their recommendations to present to me next week. More to follow on that.

Don't know what's going on with the wiki and Zope upgrade? Justin?

Our goal of "investing in R&D for new technologies" is being supported in part by the three collaborative groups mentioned under Goal #1. Meanwhile, if we figure out the operational efficiencies, then we should have more resources to apply to the R&D.

Goal #4: Commit to professional development, training and information sharing.

Some highlights:

* Steve, Shane and Tim completed the SANS Security Essentials training at Michigan State in the second half of April. We're now making a lot of progress on a Network Security project plan that includes desktop, server and network security remediation and enhancement.

* Janis and Justin spent a week in Las Vegas at Oracle training

Any other training or professional development that I should have mentioned here?

Goal #5: Implement project management in collaboration with our Library partners.

Next week, a large group of I-TECH and DLT folks are taking the Learning Tree project management classes. How we implement what they've learned and commit to that approach will be next on our list of to-dos. This is a very big deal and will no doubt create more work in the short term as we start applying methodologies but will really pay off longterm.

Goal #6: Make DLT a "preferred workplace".

I prefer DLT as a workplace. Anyone else?