Updates on the Delivery Program Resource Management Progress (part 2)

If you recall in a previous post to this blog , the Delivery Program directors now work together on a process for resource management. That is to say, the budget and positions that are broadly invested into our part of the MSIS organization are discussed and decided within the protocols of this group. We have taken the next steps since my last posting to outline a workgroup charter as well as a set of rules to abide by.

The charter is available for viewing here : MSIS Potentates Resource Management Charter

In our most recent meeting, which is the fourth time we have convened, we discussed:

-Device Support Agent position postings, two of which have since been posted on umjobs.org under this posting link.

-Business Analyst Intermediate posting, this position posted here will be for the time being reporting to Jack Kufahl as a supplemental effort of needs analysis across the Delivery Program projects and initiatives.

-UX Analyst position, which has yet to be posted, will be opened up in order to further provide user experience design effort within the Software Delivery teams. We also decided that there will be a future initiative within MSIS to help aggregate and create a community of practice or tribe around UX so that the distributed UX specific roles can collect together and further develop their methods and means within the School.

-DevOps Engineer position, which will join the Continuous Delivery and Automation team lead by Dan Stuart, is to be posted soon. This position will be the second full time member of on that team in addition to Dan. Together with the partial effort Vasile Negrea and Dave Glaser provide, that team will continue their efforts which are primarily focused around improving the delivery of application services between the software and operational teams of the Delivery Program.

-Systems Administrator position, which was recently vacated, the group decided to hold off on an immediate replacement so that we can further investigate the highest and best use of those funds and where within MSIS we should best apply them. There have been a number of changes recently within the Systems Administration team and rather that changing too much in a short period we are opting to make smaller changes, measure, analysis and proceed.

In a short amount of time, I am satisfied with the progress the resource management team has been making. We are acting together in good faith for these reviews and assignments of resources. With each person and team struggling with a large amount of work and limited capacity, I am proud to be working with these directors to have the difficult conversations and honest prioritizations at an investment level so that we can together make progress on that which is strategically important for the School.

This matches closely with our MSIS Strategy in becoming a strategy driven organization and increasing the value of our portfolios while relying on our shared values of rigor and collaboration.