In this months Issue:

• Technical Services Reorganization
• Exchange Update
• Highway Research
• Security Awareness Training
• FootPrints Tips
• PM Corner - Communication Is Key to Project Success
• BA Corner - Requirements Trawling

Technical Services Reorganization

by Tom Murray

Secretary of Administration Smith announced this week that the IT staff of both Human Resources and Finance & Management will report to the Department of Information & Innovation beginning on July 21.   This transition is consistent with the mission of DII to manage the state’s enterprise applications. The Vision system and the HR system are undergoing a significant upgrade over the coming years and this was the appropriate time to combine these units. In addition, this shift will allow the Agency of Administration to operate more efficiently and to reduce redundancies. One of the major goals for this transition will be to create a single unit that can support the technical needs of the state financial and human resource systems. The agency will also be able to build depth in our IT staff by moving to a common infrastructure and server platform for most of the agency applications. The IT staff will continue to be located in their traditional office space so that they can support the business users in those departments. DII has many new and exciting projects that are underway and we welcome the new members to the team.  

Exchange Update

from Tom Jenny

As discussed in previous newsletter articles, DII is upgrading the enterprise email system from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.  All the departments and agencies currently running on the DII email platform will be migrated over the next 8 weeks.  A subsequent project phase will focus on moving remaining departments and agencies onto the enterprise email.  Final pre-production preparations are underway.  DII staff were migrated onto the new platform on Thursday July 9, 2008 as the first group to “pilot” the new system.

A Migration team has been identified for each Agency and Department.  These migration teams have an IT, Business and Help Desk representative from their area.  These Migration teams will brought onto the system a couple of days prior to end user migration for that Agency or Department. All mailbox migrations will be done during nighttime hours, so that there is no disruption of service.  Migrations will be done Agency by Agency with smaller Agencies being migrated in one evening, while very large Agencies may be completed over the course of a few evenings.  Migration begins in mid July and should be completed by mid September.  You should notice a significant improvement in email system response time with Exchange 2007.  However, you won’t notice any difference in the Outlook client, the software you use to actually view your email.  If you use Outlook over the web (OWA), you will notice some differences in the look and feel of that application.  Microsoft has included many improvements with the 2007 version of this product. For information about your migration, training materials, or other common questions, please go to the project website at:   

http://dii.vermont.gov/Business_Users/EPMO/Project_Management/Current_Projects/exchange.

As part of the overall system implementation an additional technology called Enterprise Vault (EV) is being rolled out. This technology allows for improved stability and response time within Exchange by “vaulting” old or very large emails. In essence it moves the actual data out of the day-to-day system and parks it into another server. The subject line and first 500 characters of the email will still be present in your In or Out box, but the majority of data is actually moved. If you need to access that email, you can double click on that entry and the original email message will be viewed from the vault. This technology is an integral part of the Enterprise Exchange platform and managing email in this way maximizes the performance of the email system.

In this initial implementation all email that is more than 6 months old and emails larger than 2 megabytes and older than 2 weeks will be vaulted. For those that have constantly battled with size constraints in the current email system, EV will provide a huge value in managing the size of stored information in your mailbox as well as across the entire State. In the future, once policies are defined for retention of email in EV, it will be configured to automatically delete email that reaches a certain age. 

Highway Research Crash Reporting System Team

with Mary Spicer, Mandy White and Bob Thigpen

A team, comprised of AOT’s Mary Spicer & Mandy White and, and Bob Thigpen from DII,  was created to reconcile the differences in the reporting systems being used among the many law enforcement agencies in Vermont to create a unified crash reporting system. They developed a system compatible with, but more timely than, the process already in use with instruction plans and hot line services for officers and agencies. As a result, 14 local police departments, the Burlington Police Department, and the Vermont State Police have already joined the network of "Crash Reporting System" users. 

Security Awareness Training

from Rita Rounds

Employee Security and Privacy Awareness Training Recently, the State, through a collaborative effort, developed a basic security and privacy awareness training for state employees. All employees who regularly use a computer must complete the training by August 31st. If you have not yet completed the training you can find it at this website https://secure.vermont.gov/DII/training/. Some agencies have received waivers from this training as their departments have a more complete training that is required by their staff. The Agency of Human Services and Department of Motor Vehicles currently have approved waivers. All new employees, whether full-time or temporary will be expected to go through the training. 

FootPrints Tips

from Sue Morrison

Quick Ticket - Located in navigation pane on the far left side of Project Home, offers many tickets with pre-populated fields, including newly-added 'SPAM email issue'. Make sure when taking a ticket that you change the Status from ‘open’ to ‘assigned’ or the appropriate action; also add yourself to the assignee area.  If you are entering or updating a ticket, verify the 'send email to' area has the box(es) checked or addresses added that you want the email going to each time you update the ticket. 

PM Corner - Communication is Key to Project Success

by Christine Hetzel, PMP

Anne Morrow Lindbergh: "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after."

Though we live in a world of constant communication…email, instant messaging, blackberries, cell phones, mobile 5 and 6 devices, miscommunication abounds. The most effective project managers understand that one of the most importance aspects of their job is communication. Communication not only keeps everyone up-to-date on the project’s progress, but also facilitates buy-in and ownership of major project decisions and milestones. 

Have you considered implementing a formal Communication Plan for your project?  It’s best to put the plan together as a team. Get everyone involved in the process and capitalize on communication for the sake of the team, the project and the organization! Key components of an effective communication plan should include:

• Who do we need to communicate with?

• When should we communicate?

• How do we communicate? (Email, voice, written, meetings, etc.)

• What types of information need to be communicated?

Decide as a team the best mode of communications, frequency and what will be communicated so that expectations are set for the team as well as other stakeholders. Your team can utilize a very simple template to walk them through this process of building a plan. Please visit our website for a Communication Plan template:   http://dii.vermont.gov/Business_Users/EPMO/Project_Management/templates.

Next time we will be discussing the importance of ensuring your communication message was received.

Requirements Trawling - Continued

by Rick Daniell

In our last newsletter article, I discussed the most common technique for Requirements Trawling called "interviewing". As you may recall, this technique seems to work well for "conscious" requirements and in some case even "unconscious" requirements depending on how the interview questions are structured.

In this article I’d like to discuss another technique called "mind mapping". This technique is a graphical tool that starts with a central theme (represented by an inner circle) and then you place related topics or ideas around that circle with radiating lines connecting the two. This technique helps you illustrate relationships and branch out to sub-topics and even sub sub-topics. This type of technique can really help the user to articulate their thoughts and provides some organization or structure to the array of varying concepts. This can be a very useful tool to uncover the "unconscious" or even the "undreamed" requirements. This technique can be done with software specially designed for "mind mapping" or simply with Post-it notes on a white-board.

In our next newsletter article we will continue our series on requirement gathering techniques by exploring a technique called "Walking the process".