Project Charter
for
|
PROJECT |
Client Service Improvement |
|
PROJECT
MANAGER |
Dean
Williams Assistant
Director for Client Services, CIT 802-656-1174 |
|
Version
number |
1.1 |
|
Draft
as of |
|
|
Printed
on |
9/ |
|
Author |
Cliff Kramer Senior Project Manager, IBM ckramer@uvm.edu 802-656-2034 |
|
Owner |
Mara Saule Chief Information Officer 802-656-2020 |
Document information
Document source
This document is maintained as an online
document. Contact the Project Manager or the Project Sponsor for the latest
version.
Revision history
|
Version number |
Date |
Summary of changes |
Revision marks |
|
1.0 |
|
First
version – drafted by |
yes |
|
1.1 |
|
Added benchmarking at request of
Mara S. [djw] |
yes |
|
|
|
|
|
Approvals
The
following people have approved this document. The signed approval forms are
filed in the Project Control Book.
|
Name |
Function |
Date
of approval |
Signature |
|
Mara Saule |
Chief
Information Officer, UVM |
|
|
Distribution
This
document has been distributed to:
|
Name |
Function |
|
Roger
Lawson |
Director,
Computing & Information Technology (CIT) |
|
Patricia Ainsworth |
Project
Manager and Director, Telecommunications and Network Services, CIT |
|
|
|
|
Andy Gingras |
Assistant Director, Microcomputer
Services, CIT |
|
Keith
Kennedy |
Associate
Director, Administrative
Information Systems, CIT |
1
Preface
This Project Charter authorizes planning
and execution of the Client Service Improvement project, and designates Dean
Williams as the Project Manager. The
overall objectives of this project are to: 1) Prepare the Client Services team
for this year’s IT Master Planning process by establishing an initial
conceptual framework for delivery of highly effective and responsive support
services to UVM’s IT user community; 2) Improve the quality, completeness and
value of client services results information; and 3) Conduct
targeted activities that will noticeably improve the delivery of client
services during the current school year; and 4) Collect initial
“benchmark” data describing IT client services at other higher education
institutions. The scope of
this project will include the IT organizations that provide significant support
services to student, faculty and/or staff users of UVM’s IT computing
resources. It will share information and
be conducted in conjunction with the IT Asset Inventory and Analysis project,
and will provide inputs to portions of the IT Master Planning project.
2
Organizational
need and environment
Especially
because of its plans for program growth, UVM is concerned with ensuring that the
capabilities of its IT client services delivery function will be adequate to
support the needs of its diverse user community over the foreseeable
future. At this point, UVM’s IT client
services teams face a number of growing challenges in achieving this objective:
·
The current user community continues to increase its intensity of use,
and degree of reliance, on UVM’s computing resources. Any limitations
on the quality or responsiveness of support provided to this client base causes
a much more significant adverse impacts
on their ability to function productively than what was true in the past;
·
Planned program expansions are projected to increase student enrollment
by over 20% during the next few years. Fall 2003
enrollment is up 40 students over last year, and a residential program expansion of 800 students
is anticipated by 2005. This increasesing further the demands that will be
placed on the IT client services teams which increases
the sheer size of the use;;
·
Some IT client services locations may be viewed as poorly located or
relatively inaccessible, thereby discouraging use by some members of the user
community. While this may dampen demand
over the short-term, it can
rebound over the longer term in terms of additional support issues related to
non-standard, poorly configured and unsecured end-user computing;
·
IT
client services are provided by a variety of organizations, and the resulting
support environment is characterized by inconsistencies in the pathways and
procedures used for reporting, referring, monitoring and resolving
user-reported problems;
·
The
diversity of user computing platforms and configurations that must be supported,
complicates the ability of support staff to respond efficiently to
user-reported problems;, properly inform and educate the client base; maintain
effective network computing performance and security,; and apply innovative, automated
support practices that are now available on the market; ; and
·
Standards
for acceptable asset quality and performance have not been established in all
areas, and the current computing assets have not been documented and evaluated
fully against such standards. This
impedes the ability to assess the current support situation, identify priority
areas for improvement and management attention, and develop strategies for
improving measurable services results over time.
·
Benchmark comparisons with peer and aspirant higher
education institutions are needed to inform the University’s current review of
IT needs, organization, processes and
budgets, including the IT master plan.
As described below, this
project will begin to address these challenges
that are inherent in the effort to improve IT client services. This will help to provide the foundation for
additional project initiatives to upgrade UVM’s IT support environment, and to
provide a sound funding and management decision-making framework for future IT
investments.
3
Project
objectives and constraints
3.1
Objectives
This project will achieve the following
primary objectives:
·
Establish
an initial conceptual framework for delivery of client IT support services;
·
Complete
the design, and rollout to the entire IT user community, of the client service
results survey and analysis processes that were initiated during the last
school year;
·
Compile
potential short-term and long-term action items for client services improvement
based upon the analysis and interpretation of the collected survey data;
·
Recommend
ways to improve direct client-facing accessibility and service delivery, particularly to the student segment
of the user community; and
·
Recommend
ways to further standardize the computer resources and practices of the
employee segment of the user community, in order to enable delivery to them of more
effective, cost-efficient and innovative support practices; and
·
Provide
frameworks or templates to support the ongoing conduct of user surveys and
other information collection activities that are initiated as a result of this
project; and
·
Provide comparative information on IT client
services at peer and aspirant institutions, possibly leading to adjustments
in support models, organization, and support ratios that would
strengthen UVM’s attractiveness to students and faculty, relative to competing
schools. .
Accomplishment of these
objectives will address,
at least in part, the challenges identified in the “Organizational Need and
Environment” section of this Project Charter.
At the conclusion of this project, UVM should have a well-stated client
services framework that can be incorporated into the IT Master Planning
project, and will have more reliable, complete and maintainable information
regarding its IT client services activities and levels of user
satisfaction.
3.2
Constraints
This project needs to begin and proceed
to execution promptly because of the concerns expressed by the IT client base,
and because of its value as input to the project to develop UVM’s IT Master Plan
– an effort that will be initiated during the fall of this year. As a result, it is anticipated that this
project will be initiated by the beginning of October 2003, and all deliverable
work products provided by no later than
4
Solution
background
The scope of this
project will include IT-related client services functions across all of UVM’s
organizational units. Therefore, IT
support providers outside of CIT also need to be identified and enlisted in
this effort. The project objectives will
be accomplished through a combination of the following types of activities and
processes:
· Cross-functionalEstablishment
of a core project team consisting
of key responsible individuals for client service delivery both within CIT and the distributed IT units;
· Focused,
collaborative work sessions, comprised of IT and user community
representatives, both to develop the proposed client service framework and to
identify and analyze short-term opportunities for service improvement;
· Collection and
analysis of all relevant internally-available information sources, including
client services data recorded in the Footprints data base for all IT support
units, workstation sales and support transaction information from the Microcomputer
Depot, and updated IT asset and support resource information obtained by the IT
Asset Inventory and Analysis project team; and
· Review of student
user survey information from last year, combined with current administration of
surveys to the remainder of the targeted end-user population; and
· Collection and
analysis of external information describing IT client services at other
schools, including the annual Green report, any other
identified external sources, and direct contact with other institutions.
The primary project deliverables,
that will meet the project objectives, are as follows:
· Proposed Future IT Client Services
Delivery Framework;
· IT Client Services Survey System,
including reusable survey tools and procedures;
· IT Client Services Survey Results
Analysis;
· Alternatives and Recommendations for
Improving Client-Facing Services; and
· Alternatives and Recommendations for Improving
Employee End-User Computing Support; and
· Analysis of UVM’s IT client services in comparison to other institutions.