Tag Archives: project directory

LIS Project Directory Update

There has been a flurry of LIS Project Directory activity during the past few weeks. Along with many updates to data, several new views have been created and published, including an “Overdue” view and a “90 Days Out” view. In addition, Project Managers, LIS Leaders, and Area Directors can now access project editing from within Google Apps!

Check it out…

PS. If you are an LIS staff member who does NOT have a Middlebury Google Apps evaluation account yet, just email: gadmin@middlebury.edu to request one!

Notes from the March Manager’s Meeting

We had a manager’s meeting this month and talked about the following items:

1. Communications: We had a lengthy discussion about how we communicate within LIS, and continue to debate the relative merits of creating a private blog just for LIS, of re-introducing an email version of LISt, and in general the challenges of keeping people up-to-date about what’s going on within LIS, both so that we have the information we need to do our work, and so that we can know what conversations and decisions are on the horizon in order to have a chance to have input in advance. We’ll discuss further at an upcoming staff meeting before we make any changes. (Feel free to weigh in here via comments or via email if you have thoughts on this.)

2. Project Directory: We looked at the project directory and committed to getting the data updated in time for an April launch.

3. Priorities: We discussed a draft of a document entitled “LIS Priorities: Spring 2010 and beyond” which I created to help communicate the major projects and activities that we are focused on right now. That document lives at http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhb56n4x_129f9pmqt7g . The hope is that by publishing such a list quarterly that we as an organization can all know what the top priorities are. (We are still working on figuring out a reasonable process for actually establishing these priorities in consultation with the rest of the Middlebury community. More on that later!)

— mike

LIS Project Directory Update

The LIS Project Directory initiative is underway! For those who may have missed the brief introduction at the May 21st All LIS staff meeting, one of the primary goals of this effort is to gather information about projects that LIS is (or will be) involved in, and to make this information available to members of our community. The expectation is that the LIS Project Directory will help raise awareness about the diverse and exciting work that we do in support of the College’s mission and help inform our planning efforts.

Starting this week, a familiar representative from each area will begin connecting with workgroup leaders, team leaders, and project managers to collect a basic set of information about each project that LIS is involved in. Ron McKinnon, Joseph Watson, Dan Frostman, and Bryan Carson will be reaching out to their respective areas to gather this data and also to ensure that we are collecting the right information about projects. Once the collection effort has concluded, the LIS Administration will review all of the projects for inclusion in a web-based LIS Project Directory.

Several people have asked for clarification about what should be considered a  “project”. For the purposes of this initiative, a project is currently considered to be a one-time, multi-task endeavor that has a specific scope of work, a beginning and an end, and concludes with a deliverable result. Some projects may require planning or involve the efforts of multiple people, others may require sponsorship or even budget approval. It is important to note that daily work activities and related responsibilities are not currently considered projects.

So, be on the lookout for these “project scouts” as they begin to visit workgroups to find out what we have going on! If you have questions about this initiative, please feel free to contact me at x5480 or cnorris@middlebury.edu.

– Chris