[Macpartners] IS&T Departmental Consulting and Applications Development

[Jerry Grochow]

I am pleased to report that, based on the recommendations of the
inter-departmental committee working on the Departmental Database
Applications Project (DDADP), IS&T will be piloting new services for
departments, labs, and centers engaged in database application development.
The IS&T Web Communication Services (WCS) group will be renamed and
expanded, and begin pilot projects this fall as the IS&T Departmental
Consulting and Applications Development (DCAD) group.  DCAD will offer a
wide array of services including consulting, development, and facilitating
use of outside service providers and other IS&T services such as the
Usability Lab.  Jeff Reed will lead DCAD, ensuring the same high-level of
service you have received under his management of WCS.

Given community interest in this new service as expressed in the DDADP
study, we want to make sure that our initial offerings and pricing satisfy
community needs.  We will depend on input from the DDADP project team (whose
members have graciously agreed to serve as an initial advisory committee) to
select pilot projects as we build a scaleable and robust service.  We will
also be working with the Information Technology Architecture Group (ITAG) to
help ensure that we implement appropriate processes and service models.

I want to thank the members of the DDADP team for their excellent work over
the past several months.  Under the leadership of Bil Huxley of IS&T, the
team consisted of: 
Bill Barrasso, IS&T Client Support Services
Cecilia Marra, DUE Academic Services
Mike Sherman, Dept. of Facilities
Craig Thomas, Libraries
Dave Woodruff, Laboratory for Nuclear Science

The DDADP team obtained input via a widely distributed web-based survey and
through focus group meetings with community members.  The scope of the
team's work encompassed community interest in products such as FileMaker,
Access, and PHP/MySQL.  The team then developed recommendations about
processes and support activities for a new service offering. The DDADP final
report is available at:
http://web.mit.edu/ist/org/admincomputing/notebooks/DDADP/

As we move forward with the implementation of this new service, please
provide your comments and suggestions to Jeff Reed or to any DDADP team
member.  We look forward to expanding DCAD's pilot efforts based on your
input and demand for its services.

Jerry Grochow

_______________________________________________
Jerrold M. Grochow, Ph.D.
Vice President for Information Services and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 10-219
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-3103
jgrochow at mit.edu