Distributed Computing/Telemedia Department Meeting

                           Minutes (3/14/95)


1. Mission statement

   Distributed a printed copy of the revised mission statement based upon
   revisions made in the last department meeting (2/28/95).  Post it!
   Consider our mission whenever you make decisions about priorities and
   customer service.


2. Definition of our customer(s).

   Brenda completed the spreadsheets on who we indicated our customers were for
   every given service/task we perform.  We discussed the results which were not
   very conclusive.  A correlation among the different customers groups
   (students, staff, faculty, administrators, internal-department, public,
   student assistants) revealed the following:

                Fac     Stud    Staff   Admin   Public  Dept.

            Fac          .75    .83     .83     .47     .35
           Stud                 .72     .73     .46     .38
          Staff                         .87     .43     .40
          Admin                                 .41     .42
         Public                                         .19

NOTE:  A correlation tells you how closely two items are related.  A perfect
       correlation is 100% (or 1.0).  NO correlation is 0.0.  In the table
       above, you can see there is a *very* strong correlation between tasks
       we identify faculty (Fac) and staff (0.83) as customers for, but not
       between tasks we identify faculty and our department (0.35) as customers
       for.  Make sense?


   We talked about defining a customer as someone who we deliver a service to
   and that we are interested in satisfying.  We ask the customer about our
   performance and our services and we would make improvements based upon that
   evaluation.

   It was pointed out that we should evaluate every complaint we receive about
   our services/performance, but that we can't, nor should we, change something
   everytime we get a complaint.

   We talked about how we can find out what our customers think our our service
   and performance.  Several ideas were mentioned including student feedback
   through an advisory group (e.g., Student Technology Advisory Board),
   evaluations after we render services, continually seeking feedback whenever
   we interact with our customers and having our proposed HELPDESK "randomly"
   contact customers to request feedback.

   Another point raised was that we cannot treat every customer's request or
   complaint the same.  A complaint from a dean would require a different
   response than a complaint from a single student.  However, a complaint or
   loss of service to a large number of customers might take precedence over
   an administrator.  However, we all seemed to agree that we would need to
   listen to our customers and respond appropriately, continually evaluating
   our performance and making improvements as necessary.  We should also
   compare our performance and service to other schools.


4.  Excercise results to 4 questions: (see separate response summary)

    Distributed a summary of our responses to these questions.  (A revised
    copy is being emailed to you.)


5.  What's most important for the department to accomplish?

     - Fulfill our mission

    How can we meet our mission?

     - Reach goals that are set for the level of performance we want to achieve.

    Important goals:

     - replacing old desktop computers with more up-to-date technology.
     - finding out what our customers' mission/goals are so that we can
         work with them to fulfill their mission and reach their goals.  We
         should do this by establishing partnerships with our customers.
     - train and develop ourselves and our customers.
     - get feedback from our customers to improve our performance and our
         services.  (see #3 above)

     ... will continue this at next meeting.


NEXT STEPS in our departmental planning

 - establish teams to meet department goals (team leadership/coaching skills
     will be needed)
 - evaulate our progress (6/30/95)


AGENDA for next meeting:
    - continue identify important goals for our department to reach.

    - Determining what goals are important to be reached by 6/30; by 8/31;
        by 12/31; by 5/96?

    - Address the changes that we have identified as needed (to reduce or
        eliminate what we don't like; and, to maintain or increase what we
        like.)

    - Next meeting (to be confirmed) is Thursday, 3/30 @ 9am