I think I will be using it as professional network site.  I have never found much use in Linked for that purpose and I rather enjoy using Facebook as a place to laugh at my life and be a bit more relaxed.  My Goggle+ profile is linked from the main menu bar at the top of this site.  Add me to a circle if you like and we can see where this goes together.

So I tried the concept:

First, I started with generating a qr code using the Scan Life plugin for Chrome which generated a nice little image

This will open the logon screen of our ticketing program.  Nice but not particularly useful as it actually takes longer to create ticket on a smart phone than it does on a computer.  (In other words a lot of energy with little reward.)

Next, I started wondering is there a way to connect directly into Web Help Desk without logging in?  The answer is yes, tickets get created automatically when an email is sent to webhelp[at]allegheny.edu.  Being that the only difference between a link to a website and an email address is http:// vs. mailto: I gave it a shot.  The ScanLife plugin would not let me hack that nor would the actual scanlife website.  As not to be deterred, I googled  for an answer and found it in Kaywa. I am sure there are others but it was the first one that allowed me to switch mailto: for http:// and it generated this

This worked well in generating a email but as I was looking at my phone’s email client, I realized that I do not have it configured for my allegheny account and to generate a ticket in this way the email needs to be from an @allegheny.edu account.  Grrr!  I need to figure out how do most folks have their phone’s client configured for their @allegheny.edu account or do that use the gmail app?

With all this being said, I realize that QR codes to report a problem is much more than the typical user will be ready for and that is ok as i see this a a piece of the signage that we should create to encourage the community to report problems experienced in classrooms.

I leave this post with the following questions -

1. What are others doing to promote and facilitate the reporting of problems with technology?
2. Has anyone attempted to use QR Codes in this manner that has some tips from experience?
3. Are new releases of WebHelpDesk going to have features that will make reporting problems from smartphones be easier than it is currently?

The institution and IT organization were ripe for some change even though the University is steeped in traditions and e way things were normally done.

Conceptually he views the frame work as a series of triangle

The top triangle is governance and base triangles of quality assurance and project manage mention with the central base triangle being portfolio management.

Governance
Having senior administrators understanding that they need to be responsible and accountable for their IT. If they don’t IT wont be seen as an asset but instead a black hole of dollars and untapped resource.

Role of governance is to
Ensure strategic alignment
Assess value delivery
Optimize risk management
Advise on resource management
Promote performance measurement

Uses a senior committee structure to have a representative group review the portfolio and take ownership of projects as institutional initiatives not IT projects.

Portfolio Management
While technology is not a strategic initiative in and of itself roughly 70 percent of what is identified in the strategic plan making IT a tactic of the strategy.

They view portfolio management more universally than the stricter definitions of project management.

Some points of the portfolio management section
1. Give different priority of strategic projects than projects from the community (Faculty, Staff, Administration).
2. Give people the right and authority to say no and a structure to identify when and how to say no.
3. In this framework functional units need to share information, staff, knowledge, resources, etc..
4. There is a person whose job it is to manage the portfolio and the system hinges on this person being informed.

Project Management
1. Has invested time and resources in developing project management skills of the staff.
2. Commitment to follow project management standards in all projects.
3. Use dot project as the project management system.

Quality and Process Management
1. Time,
2. Money
3. Quality

Do you have a project manager? Nope it would be nice.. We could really use another one…

The presenter started with project management culture is not something that happens easily. He has hooked us as the audience is already frantically taking down his bits of wisdom.

Interesting enough he is spending a fair amount of time on what is culture and why it is important to understand and committing to change at that level. It comes down to people. We are the largest investment on any project and we are the reasons project succeed or fail.

Project Management is people management pure and simple.

Portfolio Management is a managed grouping of potential and active processes. The right portfolio and right culture is operationalizing strategic goals

At the end of a project the process needs to be normalized and transitioned to the service operations.

By developing a culture of project management you can solve
Priority setting issues
Minimize the I don’t have time to communicate the project, just let me get it done.
Never ending projects
Budget pressures by maximizing investments and resources 60-70% of our time is merely to keep the lights running
Gives us a way to say no
Increase the 15-20% of our time to work on strategic projects
Improvement of user technician relations
Improved employee satisfaction.

Project fails
Missing and incomplete requirements
Unrealistic timelines
Lack of user involvement
Scope creep
Lack of change control
Inadequate resources

The pillars of your project management model
1. Define the job what do you need and I will provide you what we can provide.
2. Get the right people involved. Lay it out and ask for commitment.
3. Estimates of time and cost. Be careful to avoid premature precision.
4. Breakdown the tasks.
5. Establish a change procedure – change will happen we do not want unmanaged change.
6. Know when the project is done. Agree up front the completion criteria.

Common pit falls and success factors
1. Project management culture can not be bought it needs to be bought into from the ground up and the top down.
2. Take stock of where you are now. Encourage the good and diminish the trait that aren’t in line with the culture you are developing
3. Recognize that what you are attempting is behavioral change and that takes time
4. Be multidirectional in your communication.

Maturity Model PPM
5. Pre and post project evaluations of business value, continuous evaluation.
4. Systematic project prioritization.
3. Resource management across all projects.
2. Awareness of what is in the pipeline.
1. awareness of current projects

Other important steps
Important to document a shared common language.
Standard reporting and monthly review

One of the critical pieces of the success was having the A Team. Having people who could tell you what you wouldn’t know until you failed kept them going and on time. (Does Longsight have this expertise? )

Some take aways
1. High end projects are still expected to be done in the physical computer lands. “Regular” course work on special software.

2. Make some conscious decisions about what is going to happen and what is going to be outside the scope or phase 2.

3. Rubric of selection – makes it easy to tell the story of selection.

4. Really takes a lot of conversations to put such a system into place. Basic project management so don’t forget it.

5. Don’t forget that you need documentation and q and a time. Developing a proof of concept provides ample benefits buyin from higher ups, test the value of the consultants, gets you something that can be shopped around for feedback.

6. Be willing to get something rolling and add stuff in successive phases.

7. Time out periods can be an issue. Add this as a measurement in the pilot period.

8. Storage issues where are the files be saved?

9. SPSS still does not work. NYU is working with IBM on virtual licensing wolfram.

10. Are doing access on a first come first serve system because the decided not to pursue a reservation system. They would like to have a ticket system. This was not designed for in class use. (They are in talks with the Chemistry department to provide in class access. This is an issue of citric licenses not application licenses as the chemistry classes are in the hundreds of students range. )

11. They do not use roaming profiles and time from click to use is roughly 10 seconds. Students say that is too long so there is less likelihood that they will institute a roaming profile.

12. June 1 is the deadline to have a new application added to the virtual lab to be ready for fall semester.

Stuff for our project

1. Get the players in the room and talk about this to make it a project.

2. Account for this in the summer project list.

3. Will our option be functional on windows and Mac os? Do we care?

4. Who is the on the ground champion for this project? Do I need to worry about this?

5. Are we attempting desktop virtualization or application virtualization? (what is the difference?)

6. Where are we at on licensing?

7. Is our intention to provide application access for inclass use or outofclass use?

The next several years will be characterized by IT Professionals will use the current technology in new and creative ways.

Data management becomes our job as it professionals much more than the plumbing.

Disaggregated Data is infusing a modular learning environment.

Disaggregation forces IT to decide if we support the modular tools or do we force learning to happen through a single tube. (My preference is the prior- Need to walk this walk when I return to campus)

Allegheny is being mentioned as a good example of the dissaggregation. (Guess we are already walking the walk)

Leverage

This is where we start to look at current technology and apply it in new directions.

The New Model

Everyone owns the technology not just IT – IT helps to model and develop strategies using technology to answer the problems of the institution

This implies that technologists become strategists, designers of new systems, problem solvers, project managements, economists of technology solutions, connectors of people, analysts of processes. Etc..

The tools to build this new house of IT

Interoperability

Shared Services (cloud services).
Library preservation
Virtual computer labs
Off site help desk could this be a GLCA initiative.

Portfolio approach – forces us to focus on identity management, data interoperability, persistence, etc.. Buy, develop, integrate the pieces that are necessary (this makes me proud of the Sakai choice as it provides a backbone that we can plug the best in breed into)

Open source economics
Drive innovation and pools resources allows us to get the most flexibility in scare resources and vendor.
Notion of interoperability is built natively into open source as development is standards not proprietary code.

Commoditization
This helps IT Matters. On the backend making things standard helps to allow for cost controls. And allow the tools of the front end to be used flexibly to meet the needs of the student, educator, administrator

Language of UC – Davis designers and strategists
Above campus
cloud

On campus
Private campus middleware and interoperability

Below campus
Integration with consumer based products Facebook, google, MobileMe

Stanford presentation

(need to talk with Jason about the role of data mashup in the future of Digital communication. )

(this session makes my head hurt it is running so fast with ideas and reviewing allegheny’s current position in the transition.)

I was reminded today that as a leader of a project that your first commitment is to the end goal of the project. To get there, sometimes you need to allow others to dictate how a task is accomplished and other times you need to “throw your project manager weight around” to take the straightest line from point a to point b.

The true trick is knowing when which one is called for. The distinction is often clouded by ego and fear which is the path to the dark side.

Website wireframes: Mockingbird.

I am not sure if I will ever need to use it but I post for two reasons.

1. The Try it now button only lists Safari, Firefox and Chrome.
2. The Powered by Cappuccino: no Flash needed.

Interesting that IE is omitted and Flash is called out.