2020: Administrative Application Services
Vision
How we can poise ourselves for success and
prepare for the changes happening in IT, at Harvard, and within HUIT.
I. Executive Summary
Administrative Technology Services (ATS) provides applications support, software development, project management, and data services for University-wide enterprise systems, FAS, and Central Administration offices, including the UCIO, President, and Provost. With over 100 staff and a budget of $30M, ATS manages 125 applications ranging from small web services to major ERP systems.
Because of the number of changes and the pace of change impacting administrative technology today, the ATS senior leadership team has worked to clarify what we do, whom we do it for, how we are changing, and what areas of focus we recommend to best support HUIT 3.0.
Within the industry, there is an emphasis on creating organizations that are flexible, innovative, cost effective and current with technology. On the University level, there is an effort underway to integrate the work of IT groups within Central Administration. The focus of this initiative is to create effective and nimble organizations that deliver IT solutions. Within HUIT currently, we are working to more fully adopt Agile, Cloud, DevOps, ITIL, and PMOPS, to create a VMO and Accounts management capability, and to build out a new University Data Management strategy.
In order for ATS to best prepare its teams and adapt its strategy to these significant changes, we have reframed our vision under a new name, 2020: Administrative Application Services, with the following expanded vision:
Provide an excellent user experience and further the mission of the University by rapidly and seamlessly delivering high quality application systems and data services to faculty, students, staff and alumni.
In addition, we have identified several guiding principles that are essential to support and realize this vision:
1. Embrace the HUIT changes (Including Cloud, DevOps, UDS, VMO, PMO) and emerging technology trends
2. Adopt IT industry best practices
3. Solidify our role as trusted advisors
4. Promote fluid coordination across IT units
5. Increase employee engagement
6. Promote innovation with tolerance for risk
II. Current State of ATS
ATS provides applications support, software development, project management, and data services for University-wide enterprise systems, FAS, and Central Administration offices, including the UCIO, President, and Provost. ATS is one of the largest HUIT departments with over 100 FTEs, 20 contractors/term employees, and 125 applications. These range in size from small web services to ERP systems such as Oracle Financials, PeopleSoft, and the GMAS grants management system. ATS has an operating budget of $30M and plays a leading role in University IT capital projects, which range between $20-30M each year.
ATS Services
ATS is a full service application systems organization. The major activities for each of the application systems are planning, design, development, testing, release, and support
ATS Partners and Portfolio
ATS serves Central Administration units, the executive offices of the University, all of FAS, and University technology groups within and beyond HUIT:
III. Changes In Progress
The following major developments have led to important changes that are currently in progress in ATS:
● Agile Development: 2015 marked the 20th anniversary of the Agile framework. ATS has been practicing Agile on some of its teams for many years, but today we have major projects using the scrum methodology, along with a number of dedicated scrum masters.
● Cloud Migration: This HUIT initiative began in FY15. Our goal is to have 75% of ATS applications, over 80 in total, running in the Harvard Cloud or on a SaaS-based (Software as a Service) vendor-hosted solution. ATS is partnering closely with the HUIT Cloud and Infrastructure teams on this initiative. We have a dedicated Project Manager for the migration, and members of ATS, at all levels, participate in daily, weekly, and monthly tasks and forums to achieve our goal. Our cloud migration projects and progress are published at: https://confluence.huit.harvard.edu/display/ACMP/ATS+Cloud+Migration+Project.
● DevOps: DevOps is increasingly recognized by industry as an area of strategic focus. The position of Senior DevOps Engineer is one of the most competitive positions in the IT marketplace, and an IT staffing agency recently created a separate division just for this area. The good news for Harvard and ATS is that some of our staff has been performing aspects of the role for many years. The challenge is in finding and training a sufficient number of new staff with these skills. Embedding this capability into ATS impacts all of our major development groups in the following ways:
○ Embedded DevOps engineers
○ Common cloud services and multi-tenancy
○ Incorporation of Scaled Agile Framework practices into the establishment of infrastructure
○ Embedded architects and the establishment of standard infrastructure patterns
○ Defined integration approaches for application connectivity for the cloud
○ QA automation and deployment integration
○ Automated, continuous deployment and changes to release management
○ Defined and published operational support models
● ITIL: Since its founding, HUIT has been committed to training staff in the foundations of ITIL. In fact, many have gone on to pursue higher levels of ITIL certification. HUIT’s IT Service Management team has been successful in implementing several key ITIL processes, and has made a strategic commitment to ServiceNow, a leading SaaS-based software solution. ATS has been an active participant in all of these initiatives. We use ServiceNow for incident and service request management, configuration management, project reporting, and change management.
● Systems and Technology Needs to Run HUIT: In late 2015, ATS gained approval to build a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and IT Service applications team. This includes the licensing and management of applications such as SalesForce and ServiceNow. As HUIT gets larger, we need to support the tools that this $200M organization needs in order to be most effective and nimble.
● University Data Services: the University is in the process of adopting a data management vision and strategy for the next five years. More than ever, organizations are investing in analytics, business intelligence, data modeling, and ad-hoc reporting. This year ATS responded by expanding the Harvard Data Warehouse team’s focus and re-branding it to reflect a new, broader mission: University Data Services (UDS). The group is currently engaged in two new proof-of-concept projects: enterprise data sharing using the MuleSoft platform, and a University data glossary using a tool called Collibra. In addition, the UDS team is engaged in a major upgrade to the data warehouse infrastructure, which was put in place in 2000.
● Usability: ATS is actively working to integrate the capabilities of accessibility, mobility, and user experience into our application teams and portfolios. One of our top-10 goals in FY16 is to partner with Harvard schools, departments, and governance committees to further the IT accessibility initiative. Another top-10 goal is to operationalize the mobility initiative. We are currently working with the Lamont Library Usability Lab and the Pacello Group on a 6-month pilot program in these areas.
III. Capabilities to Deliver High-Quality Solutions
ATS has identified 21 capabilities that play an essential role in delivering quality IT solutions. We believe that ATS and HUIT have many opportunities to build upon these areas, either as communities of practice or as centers of excellence:
● A Community of Practice (CoP) is a virtual team of staff—with shared expertise, interests, or job responsibilities—that is focused on a common discipline. The group has an official sponsor, but no independent reporting structure. Its members get together to share ideas, best practices, tools and templates, etc. These artifacts can be codified and disseminated as guidelines to benefit others across HUIT. Meetings tend to be informal, and can include Lunch and Learns, Webex sessions, etc.
● A Center of Excellence (CoE) is an official HUIT team or office—with its own facilities, budget, and/or resources—that is focused on a specific discipline. The group has an independent reporting structure, headed by a resource manager. The CoE collaborates with others sharing similar expertise, interests, or job responsibilities, and its members can be assigned or embedded within other teams as needed for varying lengths of time. The team provides best practices, leadership, support, and artifacts related to the particular focus area. It serves as an official source of expertise, and establishes and disseminates standards that others across HUIT are asked to follow, wherever applicable.
To uphold HUIT’s core value of collaboration, a Center of Excellence will be most effective and representative if accompanied by an active and engaged Community of Practice that crosses multiple teams. A Community of Practice will be developed for most of the capabilities listed below.
# / Capability / Description1 / Agile Methodology (Scrum Master) / The implementation of Agile principles and practices. For instance, a scrum master facilitates sprint planning, retrospectives, backlog grooming, and cross-team coordination, while removing impediments to team productivity.
2 / Analytics and Reporting / Enabling data-driven decision making by organizing data into informational and/or visual summaries that allow our business partners to ask and answer key business questions. Integrating data from multiple sources as necessary. A common goal of the reporting process is also to monitor how different areas of the business are performing.
3 / Applications Support / Assisting users by answering questions, checking that applications are working as intended, responding to break/fix incidents, and identifying and advocating for needed product enhancements.
4 / Business Analysis / Documentation / Working with our business partners to help design and improve business processes. Identifying needs and translating requirements into technical specifications, including data flows and definitions. Developing process flows, use cases, and user and project documentation.
5 / Change Management / Communications and Training / Managing the end-to-end customer experience and ensuring campus and organizational readiness for project implementation. Developing strategic communication plans, managing communications with product stakeholders, and organizing and implementing user training.
6 / Client Relationship Management / Working with clients, business owners, and project sponsors to address operational and strategic IT needs. Responsibilities include overseeing client communications, managing issue escalation, and serving as a trusted partner with University offices. This capability manages the client applications portfolio and updates the configuration management database (CMDB).
7 / Cloud / A public or private computing environment that is located off campus in distributed data centers that are not managed by the University. SaaS solutions typically run in a vendor-managed cloud. Harvard has chosen to migrate most of its applications to Amazon Web Services, where the Crimson Cloud portal will also be built.
8 / Data Access / The process of storing, retrieving, or modifying data stored in a repository, and typically sourced from a system of record. Data can be made available in many ways: data bus, ODBC, JDBC, etc.
9 / Data Architecture / The set of models, policies, rules, and standards that govern what data is collected, and how it is stored, arranged, integrated, and put to use in data systems and organizations.
10 / Data Interoperability / The way that data is defined and shared across the enterprise. Data interoperability entails a common language and common definitions that allow systems to exchange data in a reliable and predictable fashion.
11 / DevOps / A cross-disciplinary center of excellence that coordinates the activities of operations and software development staff to deploy rapidly-changing, resilient, and scalable applications quickly and accurately.
12 / Information Security and Compliance / Developing and implementing procedures, training and QA processes to ensure consistently high data security standards for administrative systems. Examples include complying with RMAS standards, and, anonymizing records for use in product documentation and demonstrations. Preparing annual security compliance assessment documentation for the Chief Information Security Officer.
13 / Platform as a Service (PaaS) / Working with HUIT’s Enterprise Architecture team to research new development platforms as they come onto the marketplace, establish preferred products, and package them into Platform as a Service (PaaS) environments to improve development quality and productivity.
14 / Project Management / The application of processes, knowledge, skills, and experience to achieve project objectives. This includes the management of project scope, time, quality, and budget.
15 / Product Management / Application planning and oversight throughout the product lifecycle, including decisions to retain, replace, refactor, or retire applications. Responsibilities include defining and prioritizing product features and enhancements.
16 / Quality Assurance and Automation / Evaluating and testing new or modified software to verify that it functions according to user requirements and conforms to established guidelines. Developing a strategy and process for automating functional QA testing. Designing and developing automated processes and scripts, creating metrics, and increasing the scope of testing through automated systems.
17 / Release Engineering / Automation of the software release process: building the source, packaging, installing, and deploying applications using a standard toolset, processes, and guidelines.
18 / Release Management / Development, testing, deployment, and support of software releases to the end user. Assists in coordinating, scheduling, and tracking key dependencies. Works closely with the project and Release Engineering teams.
19 / Software Architecture / Providing guidance and expertise in best practices and methodologies for applications development, as well as strategy and design of the development platform. Conducting research and experimentation in software architecture, and provide input to the Enterprise Technology Advisory Board (ETAB).
20 / Software Development and Package Implementation / Designing applications, coding, performing unit testing, and implementing software packages within the framework of HUIT standards, guidelines, and best practices, including the use of secure coding standards.
21 / Technical Product Management / Technical application planning and oversight throughout the product lifecycle, including decisions to retain, replace, refactor, or retire legacy applications.
22 / Usability / Accessibility / The extent to which a product allows users to readily learn its features and accomplish specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Accessibility, mobility, and user experience are key elements of this capability.
23 / Vendor Management / Overseeing vendor selection, contract negotiation, project execution, and completion. Ensuring vendor compliance with security, accessibility, and software development standards. Managing vendor communications, change orders, payments, project timing, issue escalation, and ongoing relationship with the University.
V. Next Steps