A previous post (Restructuring, Refreshing, Revitalizing) highlighted the Project Governance process. The Project Governance process is facilitated by the ITAP Committee (Information Technology Assessment and Planning Committee) and is missioned with creating a priority order, an agenda, for Grinnell's IT project initiatives. Committee members were named in the previous post.
ITAP had its second meeting yesterday. I need to say how grateful I am for this group. We have the right team representing our divisions. The committee members are engaged (at the right level), prepared, and involved. They bring us the cross divisional insights that we seek as we prioritize our project backlog.
Wonder where your pet project is falling on the priority list?
You can keep track of it at: http://www.grinnell.edu/files/gc_information_technology_projects_2012-10-17.xls .
This week the committee members will rank the top 5 projects. We will publish those in a little over a week. We will then begin a fairly detailed review of each of these projects. The sponsoring functional division will present the project. There will be time for Q&A. Then, the committee will score the project and the project sponsor will receive immediate feedback on the project's priority. Ultimately...within a month or two...the scrubbed, prioritized, project list will be presented to Senior Staff for consideration and funding.
Funded projects will be forward loaded into the ITS Resource Management plan...and we will be off and running!!
Questions: post them or give me a call at x-4377.
Ray
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
ITS Presentation to Grinnell Board of Trustees - Facilities Committee
Great meeting last Saturday morning with the Facilities Committee of the BOT. Appreciated the time with them; appreciated the opportunity to interact. Great questions. High engagement.
Attending were: Todd Linden and Shelley Floyd (Trustees), Keith Brouhle, John Kalkbrenner, President Kington, Susan Schoen, Jim Swartz, Angela Voos, Jon Case-Minners and myself.
Discussion (questions) centered around data warehouse, cloud computing, and generally "how are we doing in ITS?"
Our overall message was:
Ray
Attending were: Todd Linden and Shelley Floyd (Trustees), Keith Brouhle, John Kalkbrenner, President Kington, Susan Schoen, Jim Swartz, Angela Voos, Jon Case-Minners and myself.
Discussion (questions) centered around data warehouse, cloud computing, and generally "how are we doing in ITS?"
Our overall message was:
- Data warehouse: we have created a white paper: "Grinnell College, Becoming a Data Driven Organization, Analytics and Decision Making". This paper will be presented to the President over the next week
- Cloud computing: a practical idea; the economics need to come down a bit; bandwidth costs in rural Iowa create unique transport challenges; some topics, like Google email need to be explored this FY
- Maturity is a process. It is about continuously moving the ball downfield
- Grinnell looks like most all other colleges our size. They all face similar frustrations and similar growth topics. We don't own this space...
- The ITS team is competent, highly engaged, and cares greatly
Ray
Friday, October 12, 2012
Increasing Service Levels...now!!
Increasing Service Levels....your #1 highlighted point on the ITS Satisfaction Survey.
I found your write in comments informative, valuable, honest. They provide direction for us as we restructure.
Here is the layout of a few things that we have going in ITS to Increase Service Levels:
I get a number of questions and comments concerning how to connect with us. I hear: "How do I use your team? I don't know who to call." Here is my answer...continue, for the moment, doing what you have always done. Call X-4901, or X-4400...or, put in a Kbox ticket. We will respond. Longer term...over the weeks...we will roll these changes out to you in an organized fashion. Our intent is to be largely operational in the new structure in early November.
We'll keep you posted on progress. Thanks for stopping by...
Ray
I found your write in comments informative, valuable, honest. They provide direction for us as we restructure.
Here is the layout of a few things that we have going in ITS to Increase Service Levels:
- Separation of Student Help Desk from Faculty/Staff Service Desk
- The Student Help Desk will remain where it is located and be staffed by students
- The Faculty/Staff Service Desk will have two components:
- A front office team led by Linda Ludwig. The front office team will be comprised of individuals with excellent communications skills, excellent diagnostic skills, and a sense of urgency. The front office team will receive all tickets (a request for help, by you, to solve a technology problem) and calls...whether by Kbox, phone call, drop by, or carrier pigeon. The front office team will triage and get tickets to the right person. Tickets will be owned by a human being. Parameters will be set by the front office team regarding ticket severity. Severity levels will govern our resolution time, communications process, and start a timer for ticket escalation within the ITS management structure. Our objective in the Front Office team is to resolve 70% of our tickets on first touch. They will largely handle what we call Level 1 (L1) issues...issues of a less technical nature.
- A back office team led by Alex Kaltsas. The back office team is the more technical component of the Faculty/Staff Service Desk. The back office team is our L2/L3 team. They will be responsible for account provisioning, hardware/software provisioning (ordering), license management, lab maintenance, and creating and deploying desktop images. The back office team will office in close proximity to the front office team in the South Lounge.
- New Service Desk Location, the South Lounge. The South Lounge will be the location of our Service Desk area. It will provide a work space that will allow for the consolidation of our service personnel who currently are scattered in The Forum. Consolidation will allow us to provide a highly collaborative approach to problem solving...resulting in better service to you. The layout will foster teamwork and provide a proximity to the Student Help Desk for the escalation of their issues. We plan an open house in early November after we move in to this space.
- A new Service Desk Manager has been hired. John Hammond will be joining us later this month from the University of Iowa. John will report to me (Director of ITS) and have oversight over the Student Help Desk and the Faculty/Staff Service Desk. Student workers will report to John.
- Kbox will be our main method for logging and tracking tickets. We need to log all tickets...track them to completion, determine who's queue is filling up, and determine service trends. Weekly, we will be creating reports...ticket aging...queues by ITS staff member...top ticket types...etc. Weekly, we will do root cause analysis; then, for our top five occurring incidents each week, we will create permanent fixes. Takes us out of the "whack-a-mole" business.
- Karen and Alex have been going through old tickets for the past 2 weeks. The oldest ticket we have found that I am aware of is from February. Fortunately, February of this year. If that was yours, know that you hold the winning ticket...so far. What an honor...!!! So, we are following up on old tickets and resolving them! We will likely be doing a lot of apologizing over the next few weeks. Good news is we are making progress...good progress. I believe that all printer issues are resolved on campus.
- We are going to prioritize a focus on serving people with disabilities...increasing service levels for those with access constraints. We have 25-40 students on campus with disabilities that need technology enablement. As I attended the Disabilities Committee meeting last week, I learned how much I personally need to mature my thinking about individuals with disabilities. My desire is that ITS be a leader in assisting our fellow students and workers who carry the daily disadvantage of access. I desire for us to be a department that cares for and responds to all members of our community.
I get a number of questions and comments concerning how to connect with us. I hear: "How do I use your team? I don't know who to call." Here is my answer...continue, for the moment, doing what you have always done. Call X-4901, or X-4400...or, put in a Kbox ticket. We will respond. Longer term...over the weeks...we will roll these changes out to you in an organized fashion. Our intent is to be largely operational in the new structure in early November.
We'll keep you posted on progress. Thanks for stopping by...
Ray
Restructuring, Refreshing, Revitalizing
We are in the process of restructuring, refreshing, and revitalizing ITS...all with the objective of bringing you better service and responding to the needs cited by you, as a community, in the recent ITS survey.
The Moran Report highlighted many areas that required focus. Rather than try to accomplish "the world" and do little with many initiaties, we have taken on what we perceive to be the top three initiatives that will help the institution:
Resource Management involves how we use our resources within ITS. Within ITS our main resource (besides equipment) and most valuable asset is our people. I think of our ITS staff as a resource box. That box, for each person, contains 2080 hours per year (52 weeks x 40 hrs/wk). We have 28 boxes (28 staff members). The hours within the box are consumed by categories of activity (see chart below)...vacation/sick leave/training...maintenance (updating software release levels, applying fixes, etc. - like changing the oil in your car)...support (fixing items that are broken; responding to service calls)...tasks (under 40 hour pieces of work; we get 100's of these requests!!)...and projects (over 40 hour pieces of work). Tasks and projects are discretionary topics. We need to perform maintenance and support...and of course, take vacation!!...but what projects we take on and what tasks we take on is discretionary as an institution. My desire within ITS is to take on the tasks and projects that have the greatest value to the overall organization. It is not for ITS to define the projects of greatest value; that priority must come from outside of ITS. Setting the priority of projects, the ITS project agenda, is the subject of Project Governance.
Project Governance will be accomplished by the ITAP (Information Technology Assessment and Planning) Committee. This committee is comprised of individuals from across the college...respresentatives from each of your functional units (see list of members, below). Through a structured process, this committee will bring projects forward for consideration; they will evaluate and prioritized the 68+ projects that we have queued up on campus. We can't do all things at once, but we can work through the institutional priorities in an organized, prioritized manner. That is what ITAP will help us with. ITAP is an extremely important committee to this institution; it sets our IT agenda. ITAP is advisory in nature...advisory to the Senior Staff, who will review the prioritized list of projects and authorize funding. ITAP will only work if all technology projects are reviewed through this mechanism...work arounds undermine the process and the team. Work arounds will get us back to the frustrating place that we are currently in.
Our first ITAP meeting was held a couple of weeks ago. The ITAP team is a great, great team. It is absolutely the right group for this type of work. Over the next few weeks we will be prioritizing the institution's projects. Make sure you are getting your project requests to your ITAP representative. We will be developing the ITS agenda.
Where will all of this bring us?
We will experience several major lifts!
First, we will have a prioritized agenda for projects in the college. Today, we have 3-4X workload for our current resource capacity (for projects). Things don't get done. There aren't due dates. People in the institution are frustrated. This will change. Timeframe: it will likely take ITAP a couple of months to thoughtfully move through the project list.
Once we have a prioritized project list, we will forward load our resourcing plan within ITS...in a sense, pre-allocating our time. Projects will be estimated by skill type and thoughtfully managed. We will all have a proper sense of expectation, and ITS will deliver. "Outlyer projects" will be easily managed. We will be in a position as an institution to determine what projects we want to take out of the box to put the outlyer in...or, determine exactly what incremental resources are needed to accomodate new initiatives or outlyers. Simple. Straight forward. Highly manageable. Communicative. We will get a lift.
I am very excited about where all of this will take us. I love working with this community. You are a highly competent, good hearted group. I'm grateful to be here.
The subject of my next post will highlight the changes we are making in the Service organization.
Consider subscribing to this blog to get email notifications of new posts. Consider forwarding this link to others, if you find value in these communications.
Ray
The Moran Report highlighted many areas that required focus. Rather than try to accomplish "the world" and do little with many initiaties, we have taken on what we perceive to be the top three initiatives that will help the institution:
- Increasing Service Levels
- Resource Management
- Project Governance
Resource Management involves how we use our resources within ITS. Within ITS our main resource (besides equipment) and most valuable asset is our people. I think of our ITS staff as a resource box. That box, for each person, contains 2080 hours per year (52 weeks x 40 hrs/wk). We have 28 boxes (28 staff members). The hours within the box are consumed by categories of activity (see chart below)...vacation/sick leave/training...maintenance (updating software release levels, applying fixes, etc. - like changing the oil in your car)...support (fixing items that are broken; responding to service calls)...tasks (under 40 hour pieces of work; we get 100's of these requests!!)...and projects (over 40 hour pieces of work). Tasks and projects are discretionary topics. We need to perform maintenance and support...and of course, take vacation!!...but what projects we take on and what tasks we take on is discretionary as an institution. My desire within ITS is to take on the tasks and projects that have the greatest value to the overall organization. It is not for ITS to define the projects of greatest value; that priority must come from outside of ITS. Setting the priority of projects, the ITS project agenda, is the subject of Project Governance.
Project Governance will be accomplished by the ITAP (Information Technology Assessment and Planning) Committee. This committee is comprised of individuals from across the college...respresentatives from each of your functional units (see list of members, below). Through a structured process, this committee will bring projects forward for consideration; they will evaluate and prioritized the 68+ projects that we have queued up on campus. We can't do all things at once, but we can work through the institutional priorities in an organized, prioritized manner. That is what ITAP will help us with. ITAP is an extremely important committee to this institution; it sets our IT agenda. ITAP is advisory in nature...advisory to the Senior Staff, who will review the prioritized list of projects and authorize funding. ITAP will only work if all technology projects are reviewed through this mechanism...work arounds undermine the process and the team. Work arounds will get us back to the frustrating place that we are currently in.
ITAP Committee Members
Our first ITAP meeting was held a couple of weeks ago. The ITAP team is a great, great team. It is absolutely the right group for this type of work. Over the next few weeks we will be prioritizing the institution's projects. Make sure you are getting your project requests to your ITAP representative. We will be developing the ITS agenda.
Where will all of this bring us?
We will experience several major lifts!
First, we will have a prioritized agenda for projects in the college. Today, we have 3-4X workload for our current resource capacity (for projects). Things don't get done. There aren't due dates. People in the institution are frustrated. This will change. Timeframe: it will likely take ITAP a couple of months to thoughtfully move through the project list.
Once we have a prioritized project list, we will forward load our resourcing plan within ITS...in a sense, pre-allocating our time. Projects will be estimated by skill type and thoughtfully managed. We will all have a proper sense of expectation, and ITS will deliver. "Outlyer projects" will be easily managed. We will be in a position as an institution to determine what projects we want to take out of the box to put the outlyer in...or, determine exactly what incremental resources are needed to accomodate new initiatives or outlyers. Simple. Straight forward. Highly manageable. Communicative. We will get a lift.
I am very excited about where all of this will take us. I love working with this community. You are a highly competent, good hearted group. I'm grateful to be here.
The subject of my next post will highlight the changes we are making in the Service organization.
Consider subscribing to this blog to get email notifications of new posts. Consider forwarding this link to others, if you find value in these communications.
Ray
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
ITS Survey Results
I am really grateful for your response to the recent ITS survey…282 responses! That is
incredible. You gave us highly valuable
input...input that is serving to create positive changes in our support organization.
Here is a snapshot of the survey results:
Responses by Division:
Responses by Job Title:
Overall, what were my impressions of the survey results?
First of all, I was amazed by the number of people that responded. It was really encouraging to see how much people care about IT and how willing we are as a community to provide our input. Thank you.
Secondly, I was surprised by the relatively high overall satisfaction score (3.51/5.0). While the score was higher than I expected, there are clearly some deeply seated satisfaction issues. The write-in's clearly called them out. Our satisfaction with ITS services needs to improve. It will. Overall, my target is probably in the 4.2 range. With a highly varied constituency, achieving a 5.0 is unrealistic. Also noteworthy is the spread of satisfaction between departments. Pretty varied. That's OK; it provides us target information of where we have extra work to do.
I found the write-ins to carry a consistent theme. The focus was on support operations. Slow response time, poor communications, and "the black hole" were dominant comments. What we expected...but the write-ins directed clarity to the topics that we are focusing on. Highly valuable.
Regarding survey format, I should comment that the survey results are presented anonymously. I think that this format allowed us as a community to speak freely and openly. I greatly appreciate that. It gives us the input that we need.
Where do we go from here?
The ITS Satisfaction Survey provides us a set of baseline measurements that we can work from. My desire is to garner a quantitative sense (the numerical scores) of where we are satisfaction wise as a community, yet harvest your free form feedback (write-in's). As we adjust the dials of the ITS Service dashboard, we will remeasure to see if the needle is moving in the direction that we intend for it to move. We'll take a relook later this academic year.
We are in the midst of some pretty significant changes in ITS. We are adding process, accountability, cultural changes, and some organizational changes...all intended to provide you with the service levels that you desire. These changes are largely behind the curtain to you at this point, but you will see the results in the very near term. These changes will be the subject of my next post.
Subscribe to this blog...we will try to use this as a communication vehicle to keep you updated.
Ray
Here is a snapshot of the survey results:
Responses by Division:
| Averages | ||
| Division | Count of Division | Satisfaction/Dept |
| Academic Affairs | 56 | 3.50 |
| Admission and Financial Aid | 15 | 3.33 |
| College Services | 37 | 4.14 |
| Communications | 7 | 2.71 |
| Development & Alumni Relations | 16 | 3.75 |
| FACULTY | 102 | 3.16 |
| Finance | 13 | 4.45 |
| President | 10 | 2.70 |
| Student Affairs | 24 | 4.09 |
| Treasurer | 2 | 4.50 |
| Grand Total | 282 | 3.51 |
Responses by Job Title:
| Averages | ||
| Title | Count of Title | Satisfaction/Dept |
| Assistant Director | 15 | 3.40 |
| Associate Director | 7 | 3.71 |
| Director | 13 | 3.62 |
| Faculty | 102 | 3.16 |
| Manager | 2 | 5.00 |
| Professional Staff | 52 | 3.60 |
| Support Staff | 79 | 3.85 |
| VP | 6 | 3.33 |
| Grand Total | 282 | 3.51 |
Overall, what were my impressions of the survey results?
First of all, I was amazed by the number of people that responded. It was really encouraging to see how much people care about IT and how willing we are as a community to provide our input. Thank you.
Secondly, I was surprised by the relatively high overall satisfaction score (3.51/5.0). While the score was higher than I expected, there are clearly some deeply seated satisfaction issues. The write-in's clearly called them out. Our satisfaction with ITS services needs to improve. It will. Overall, my target is probably in the 4.2 range. With a highly varied constituency, achieving a 5.0 is unrealistic. Also noteworthy is the spread of satisfaction between departments. Pretty varied. That's OK; it provides us target information of where we have extra work to do.
I found the write-ins to carry a consistent theme. The focus was on support operations. Slow response time, poor communications, and "the black hole" were dominant comments. What we expected...but the write-ins directed clarity to the topics that we are focusing on. Highly valuable.
Regarding survey format, I should comment that the survey results are presented anonymously. I think that this format allowed us as a community to speak freely and openly. I greatly appreciate that. It gives us the input that we need.
Where do we go from here?
The ITS Satisfaction Survey provides us a set of baseline measurements that we can work from. My desire is to garner a quantitative sense (the numerical scores) of where we are satisfaction wise as a community, yet harvest your free form feedback (write-in's). As we adjust the dials of the ITS Service dashboard, we will remeasure to see if the needle is moving in the direction that we intend for it to move. We'll take a relook later this academic year.
We are in the midst of some pretty significant changes in ITS. We are adding process, accountability, cultural changes, and some organizational changes...all intended to provide you with the service levels that you desire. These changes are largely behind the curtain to you at this point, but you will see the results in the very near term. These changes will be the subject of my next post.
Subscribe to this blog...we will try to use this as a communication vehicle to keep you updated.
Ray
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