CIA Home
About CIA¶
CIA is divided into 4 sub-teams: Linux/UNIX, Windows, Provisioning, and Telephony.
Communication¶
NCS CIA values clear, concise, transparent, asynchronous, and frequent communication.
Here you will find our most important modes of communication, and how to best leverage them:
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Teams | NCS operates a public (internal to McGill University) MS Teams group: NCS_Group. |
| When to Use: | For specific questions related to one of our teams, please use one of the following channels |
| CIA Linux channel | |
| CIA Windows channel | |
| All other questions, or if you are unsure which team is responsible, please use our General channel. | |
| Want to come say "Hi" and chat with the CIA team? Join us in the Off-Topic channel! | |
| GitLab | Much of the infrastructure that CIA Linux supports is documented and managed via GitLab projects. |
| When to Use: | Issues or requests related to projects should be created under their respective Gitlab project when the work is actionable. If you are unsure, or if it is urgent, message the relevant channel in MS Teams. Merge Request are not only accepted, but encouraged. Please be sure to read the project's contribution guidelines before submitting a MR. |
| Service Now | Any OS-related change request for servers that are not managed with a GitLab project should be made through a generic IT request on SNOW and assigned to NCS - Core Infrastructure Applications. Such change requests may include, but are not limited to: server access, local firewall changes, installing or updating software. Note that all new projects should include a GitLab project to manage the configuration of the server and installed application(s). |
| We still accept it! | |
| When to Use: | When the work isn't part of an actionable change in a GitLab project, and you do not mind waiting for a response. |
| Bi-weekly (fortnightly) CIA Staff meetings: | NOTE: Do we want to allow anyone who works in ITS to join? How would we setup a meeting link for that? Ideas include allowing people as observers only. Alternatively, record and share meetings & transcripts? This would also be useful for CIA staff who are absent. |
| Private chats... | are discouraged as a first line of communication should you have an issue. We encourage you to start at a team level. This will allow anyone on the team who is currently available to reply, and will help everyone be aware of the issues, problems, and solutions. |
Keeping Informed¶
With everyone working remotely, it is more important than ever to put in effort to stay informed. But we want to make that easier for you! We employ multimodal communication; In short, we will cross-post our announcements to help make sure that you are aware of the, and we will have a single-source of truth for them) that all postings will link back to.
For CIA, any important initiatives will be announced in our MS Teams Announcements Channel.
Communication Paths¶
It does happen that communication, especially remote communication, does not go as smoothly or as quickly as we would like. Here are some guidelines for content escalation:
On-Call Schedules¶
- CIA Linux (SNOW )
- CIA Windows (SNOW )
What About Video Meetings?¶
Meetings can be useful to get people on the same page, and video meetings can be helpful to improve communication. But they also have some serous drawbacks, and thus should be used sparingly.
Our general rule of thumb is that if a conversation goes back-and-forth 3 times in MS Teams or on GitLab without making progress in the understanding, then a video chat is warranted. Once the details are worked out and a consensus is reached, the information must then be transcribed back into MS Teams or GitLab for reference by other members of the teams.
Why are meetings and 1:1 chats discouraged?¶
- Silos: Video meetings and 1:1 chats create a bubble of information that is only then known between the two participants. It is not easy to share, and additional effort must be made to bring other team members up to date with what is happening. This rarely happens.
- Lost productivity: It doesn't matter how short or how long the meeting is, the loss of productivity is significantly greater. Interruptions increase the risk of errors, and destroy creative work. A 5 minute interruption when programming or trying to figure out a complex problem can result in 30 minutes of additional time getting back to where we were.
- Meetings require synchronous communication, which is at odds with how most of the work in CIA is done. Asynchronous communication allows us to better manage our work to help make sure issues are addressed in a timely manner.
- Zoom Fatigue is real.