Last edit: 05-03-17 Graham Wideman

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Shared Background Understanding of the Enterprise

The Org Chart

Our first challenge was to deal with the fact that SDSU did not have a comprehensive organization chart. So my initial campus-wide interview phase, along with coarse-level info systems information, I collected all available org charts. I compiled the "evidence" into my developing conceptual-mapping environment.  After a few months I was able to generate a comprehensive org chart, showing all identifiable departments, the location and use of all identified info systems, and the org affiliation of all I.S. groups or individuals.

This resulted in a chart 8 feet long -- so I soon became know as "the guy with the 8-foot chart". People's response to seeing the chart was very interesting -- aside from reacting to the size, many were fascinated to see laid out for the first time the structure of the organization they had worked in for so many years.  It also made very clear that nobody had a good intuition about the extent of existing info systems -- there was much more complexity than any individual realized.

Gratuitous picture of the org char with systems arrayed at the bottom... as it appears automatically drawn in Visio (this is the 3% size view -- don't try reading this at home).

A little later we demonstrated a web-browsable version of this org chart (in a "tree-view" structure), and by early 97 demonstrated (to considerable management approval)  how the organization tree-view could be used as a navigation framework to browse more detailed organizational data, and narrative info (for example departmental home pages).

Being a demo, though functional, we hoped that this mechanism would be replaced by an ongoing production application -- and the idea was that this should be based on an authoritative organization id repository.  Fortunately, just such an authority was on the horizon, as the university had undertaken a Peoplesoft HR implementation.  I became involved in the technical working group defining the organization structure for that system.   That committee made recommendations in December 96. Since that time the process bogged down in management committees, and in late 97 the Peoplesoft project was scrapped entirely.  So by 1998 the conceptually crucial Organization Id situation was back to square one.

Information Technology Architecture Overview

In mid-96, Dr Stephen Weber arrived as the new university President, and this afforded a number of opportunities for change and also for uncertainty.  By fall 96, Dr Weber had spoken quite strongly in favor of more enlightened information ways, and was asking for an overview of the current state of affairs.  I was fortunate to be in an ideal spot to coordinate the efforts of numerous colleagues, and to compile the result as the first ever comprehensive campus survey of the state of IT.  (Needless to say, this also featured an 8-foot org chart.)

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