Experiences from Multi-organizational Service Development and Operations

1

Pekka Lehtovuori and Jarno Laitinen CSC

FORGE Service Lab: Recap of the first year webinar 28.4.2015

The content of the presentation

! What is CSC? ! What is CSC’s role in FORGE? ! Multi-organisational work?

! Pros & cons ! Some experiences ! Very generic based on several CSC cases, not FORGE focused

2

Experiences from Multi-organizational Service Development and Operations

CSC’S PROJECT WORLD

3

CSC’s service areas

Funet network services Fast research and education network – versatile network services

Computing services High-performance computing and IT consulting services

Hosting services

Application services Support, development and infrastructure for computational science and engineering.

Data services for science and culture Solutions for data storage, management and analysis needs

Storage capasity > 10 PB

Information management services Reliable, cost-effective and centralized information management services

@CSC: https://www.csc.fi/web/atcsc Training: www.csc.fi/courses Annual report: https://www.csc.fi/web/annual-report/vuosi2014/etusivu

CSC in EC and Finnish Res. Inf. projects

euclid

CSC in FP7

! CSC was the most successful large Finnish corporation in the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), as measured in terms of the number and monetary value of projects.

! CSC was on board 27 EU projects (11,4 M€) ! CSC role usually infrastructure provider in multi

organizational projects

6

Service operations ! CSC operates services e.g. for national digital

archiving, university libraries ! CSC operates IaaS Service for FORGE

7

DIGILE KE - FAP

CSC

FORGE Affiliates FORGE Affiliates

FORGE Services

- HelpDesk, git…

IaaS

KE - FAP CSC DIGILE

operates

uses

Communication structure

2nd level support development operations

Service operations

1st level support contracts etc.

MULTI-ORGANISATIONAL (M-O) WORK

8

Why m-o collaboration?

! Different specialisation of the organisations –  e.g. data center service providers

! The more organisations, the more people and expertise and different expertise, background, systems, customer base..

! Involve users / user communities: service likely to be taken into usage, better outcome, usability

! Project funding usually requires multiple partners ! Complex IT services better to develope in

collaborative mode than in buyer-seller model

9

Challenges of m-o collaboration ! Getting involved takes time and effort, political

decisions ! Building trust and good collaboration relationship

takes time. Can the failures be shared? Confidentiality issues e.g. in system operations.

! Ensure common vision of outcome: what exactly we are building? Values of the other organisations?

! More complex steering and decision making structures –  Steering groups, boards, project/service management,…

! Requires support functions e.g. PMO ! Sustainability: dependencies of project funding or

other partners funding 10

Organisation level: contracts ! Contracts might be very extensive

–  What is reasonable and possible to fix in contract?

! Collaboration agreement, Project directive and Project plan… –  Funding –  Which resources and services is brought by whom,

when and what price and level? –  Definition of the RESPONSIBILITIES

! Term of Usage of the Service must be agreed ! Security agreements, intellectual property rights ! Reporting and review practises ! Risk management, penalties,

11

DOING IT TOGETHER

12

Team work

! Team formation process takes more time ! Trust building and open communications

–  Effective decision making & conflict resolution –  How to learn to know in person? –  Collaboration: What do they know?

! Rewards of projects success or good services is more unlikely to happen inside the multi-organisation collaborations

13

Meetings

! Is there enough face-to-face meetings and kick-off?

! Regulard meetings: optimal amount? –  Not only inside teams but also to each team member? –  Good facilitation skills and agenda needed for efficient

work and keep people interested –  Time zone and scheduling challenge

14

Virtual communication

! Fortunately there are cloud services!! –  Project management tools –  Wikis, Document management services etc.

!  People do change: do they find the information?

! Email and teleconferences (so old fashioned?) ! Chat, Skype, Hangout, Adobe connect etc.

–  How to keep track what was discussed and agreed? –  Technical challenges still not unusual

15

PEOPLE DO THE SERVICES!

16

Person level management

! Project team lead from an other organisation cannot see remote person feeling, workload and priorisation that well

! Named persons vs. Service contact address. Efficiency vs trust?

! HR: recruitment, training etc. probably not coordinated in multi-organisation point of view

17

Team level management

! Dedicated persons vs. capabilities of organization as a service

! Person-to-person communication is good but there might be hidden conflicts or subgroups affecting negatively for common goals

! Common spirit: shared responsibility of success and failures, doing it together

! Many boss prioritization

18

Communication

! Hardly cannot be overdone! ! Agile scrum practises are essentially communications ! Clear roles, goals, strategy and visions ! Different work culture and background

–  Technical-technical person !  How about network expert <---> software developer?

–  IT services provider vs. end-user

! Cultural differencies in communication styles

19

OPERATIONS IN REAL LIFE

20

Service Operations

! Centralised systems might require effort and changes for the services e.g. monitoring

! There might circulating roles e.g. helpdesk duties or to keep eye on the services are up and running –  Scheduling needs own effort, more varying skillset than if

consentrated for a single organisation? ! Operations can be separated of the development

teams and platforms

21

Tools

! Often existing internal tools cannot be used due security or license reasons or not fit for the purpose

! Problem resolution might need several ticket systems (per organization). Not integrated.

! Somebody needs to select, operate a new tool (unless cloud service), licensing, user account management.. –  Can that be handed over if the partner leaves?

22

TRUST IS CRUCIAL FOR SUCCESS IN

MULTI-ORGANISATIONAL COLLABORATION

23