Lyngby, May 22 2007

What do they want from us?

Dennis Beckers

The role of user research in portfolio- and lifecycle management

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SURFnet• Develops and manages national research network• Not for profit organization, 60 employees• 180 connected institutions, 750.000 users

• Funding:

Exploitation (18 M)

Innovation

(14 M)

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Budget allocation

Content deliveryGroupware applications

End user supportSecurity

Authentication & Authorization

Networkinfrastructure

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Lifecycle model

TechnologyScouting

UserResearch

FeasabilityStudy Service

development

Stimulating use&

Support

Production Decom-missioning

Technologydevelopment

Needs ofinstitutions

1 2 3 4 5 6

Plan for feasability

study

Business case & plan DO

Introduction service

Large scale service

provisioning

Decommis-sioning service

Shutting downservice

Feedback

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User research

End users Contacts Special Interest at institutions Groups

(3.000) (97, 75%) (4)

• Goals are to provide insight in: – Demands and requests of institutions– Strong and weak points of our services

• Yearly

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Research methodology

End users

Special interest groups

Organizations interviews analysis

interviews

focusgroups

analysis

analysis Online survey

Online survey

conclusions

qualitative quantitative

synthesis

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Research among institutions1. preliminary qualitative interviews with 10 institutions

Goal: to gather themes and to test questionnaire

Themes: - image of SURFnet- roles of SURFnet- the portfolio of services- relation SURFnet and institution- knowledge dissemination- satisfaction services- future developments

2. Online quantitative survey among all institutions

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Research among SIGs

• Adapted version of questionnaire for institutions

• Discussions during regular meetings or questionnaire

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Research among end users

1. Focus groups

2. Online survey (> 3000 participants)

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Synthesis• Meeting of 20 representatives of institutions (14), SIGs (2)

and end user groups (4).

• SURFnet formulates conclusions for the portfolio, services and innovation, based on the results of the research

• To check whether institutions, SIG’s and end users support conclusions SURFnet

• The conclusions of the synthesis have been instrumental for choices that are made regarding– Service portfolio 2007– Activity plans for innovation projects

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Results: name recognition remains low

knowSURFnet

2006%

2004%

Students 29 22Staff 64 55Total 51 39

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Use and opinion services

• Every respondent uses (often unconscious) SURFnet

• Mainly because of unawareness, use of other services remains behind

• Services that are being used are well evaluated

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Opinions of institutions

• SURFnet is considered to be innovative, reliable, customer oriented and not bureaucratic

• 25% of the institutions think SURFnet is expensive

• Services:– Match well with the needs of the institutions– (when used) are well valued– Portfolio is balanced and complete

(minus remote storage)

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Changes in service portfolio

• Changes in service portfolio:– New services (dynamical lightpaths, mailfilter)– Discontinuing others (search engine, X.509 PKI)

• More coherence of services

• Integration between group communication and content delivery

• Institution specific reports

• Operational excellence

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Changes for innovation plans

• Focus on operational excellence• Focus on stimulating the use of services by

researchers and teachers• Active stimulation of adoption and use of security and

aai-services • Temporarily less focus on (new) service development• Technology scouting as a basis for gathering and

disseminating of knowledge

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Questions/comments?

Dennis Beckers dennis.beckers@surfnet.nl