More on the group's mission statement

Greetings,

      Thanks to everyone who has so far commented on the proposed mission
statement. Those of you who have not yet sent your comments, please do so.

      I wanted to list a few things that I think will help us as we move
toward our mission statement:

1) Let's abstract the ideas from the technology (or the "what" from the
"how") Our mission statement (and CSFs) should not mention any specific
technologies by name. Our mission should state the problem we are trying to
solve. the CSF analysis deals with the "what". Technologies come and go,
standards don't.

2) Issues like machine-readability are very important but are at a lower
level of abstraction than our mission statement. This is a requirement; not
a mission. Let's concentrate on getting the mission settled, and then we
can work our way down the hierarchy from mission to goals to CSFs to
requirements. Keeping our thinking focused on the right level of
abstraction at any given time is the most difficult challenge in executing
this technique.

3) Ideally, our mission statement should be small and simple enough to fit
on a business card, and its meaning should be clear to everyone, and free
to technical jargon.

      This is all just advice - I'm just trying to facilitate this
exercise. I'll faithfully write up and perform "wordsmithing" on whatever
the group agrees upon.

Regards,

D-





*************************************************
Dr. Daniel Austin
Sr. Technical Architect / Architecture Team Lead
daniel_austin@notes.grainger.com <----- Note change!
847 793 5044
Visit http://www.grainger.com

"If I get a little money, I buy books. If there is anything left over, I
buy clothing and food."
-Erasmus

Received on Tuesday, 13 May 2003 15:30:46 UTC