IT Pro Hub Criteria

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Criteria for inclusion

Audience 

IT professionals must be either the primary audience for a resource or a key audience among multiple audiences. A resource is not included if it is tangentially interesting to many IT pros – they must be an explicitly targeted audience. 

Relevance 

Few resources will be relevant to all IT Pros, but they should at minimum be broadly relevant to a significant subset of IT pros dispersed across campus. The following criteria may help in determining whether a resource makes sense for inclusion. Resources do not need to meet all criteria; the more they meet, the better the signal for inclusion. 

• Topic sufficiently broad to be relevant to IT pros with many disparate job duties 
• Topic applicable to everyone within a particular recognizable sub-section of IT pros across many/all colleges (e.g. AV pros, help desk support, end user support, webmasters) 
• IT pro audience sufficiently diffuse across many different colleges (50 IT pros across dozens of colleges is preferable to 50 IT pros in a single college) 

Topic timeframe 

Resource must have a long-term timeframe with continuing relevance into the future; COPs, Teams, or lists created for short-term needs (e.g. a single project or semester-long need) should not be included. The ideal timeframe is at least 2-3 years up to indefinite. Timeframes as short as 1 year may be considered on a case-by-case basis. 

Ownership 

Must be actively managed by two or (preferably) more current University employees. The owner(s) of the resource must be identifiable and responsive to inquiries about the resource. 

Activity level 

Must be active and maintained. For Teams and mailing lists, consider the cadence of postings; for COPs, consider the cadence of meetings or communications among participants. A low volume of meetings/postings/communications is acceptable, as long as the resource does not appear abandoned. Resources with no activity in the past year and none scheduled for the coming year are unlikely to be included. 

Minimum activity level by resource: 

• MS Teams: monthly postings 
• Mailing lists: monthly postings
• Communities of Practice: must hold meetings regularly (e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually) 

Membership 

Resource must have the following minimum membership/subscription base: 

• MS Teams: 50 members
• Mailing lists: 50 subscribers
• Communities of Practice: 20 regular participants

Additional notes 

Grain size 

Include only the largest grain size possible. Example: 

• IT Partners: include IT Partners as a Community of Practice with link to website but don’t link to the various MS Teams teams for IT Partners 

Campus Scope 

Prioritize the Urbana campus over System-level resources, when both exist. Example: 

• TeamDynamix: include TeamDynamix Advisory Group (Urbana-specific) rather than TeamDynamix Collaborative Board (System-level) and TeamDynamix Communications and Training (System-level) 

Criteria Table 

Criteria	Meets criteria?  Yes/No	How does this resource meet/not meet criteria?
Audience	Yes / No
Relevance	Yes / No
Topic Timeframe	Yes / No
Ownership	Yes / No
Activity Level	Yes / No

Examples 

Mailing List: Tech Support mailing list (techsupport@lists.illinois.edu) 

Criteria	Meets criteria?  Yes/No	How does this resource meet/not meet criteria?
Audience	Yes	IT Pros are the target audience.
Relevance	Yes	Universal relevance to all IT pros.
Topic Timeframe	Yes	Indefinite.
Ownership	Yes	Two owners: Lauren Stream, Rob Watson.
Activity Level	Yes	Monthly postings through the year since 2013.

Microsoft Teams: Application Development 

Criteria	Meets criteria?  Yes/No	How does this resource meet/not meet criteria?
Audience	Yes	IT Pros are the target audience.
Relevance	Yes	Relevant to a large swath of IT pros across campus involved in application development. 802 members.
Topic Timeframe	Yes	Indefinite.
Ownership	Yes	One owner: Nate Baxley.
Activity Level	Yes	Most channels inactive for a year or more; 1 active channel (Coding Community) with monthly postings and an ongoing meeting chat for a monthly discussion group.

Microsoft Teams: Project Management Community 

Criteria	Meets criteria?  Yes/No	How does this resource meet/not meet criteria?
Audience	No	IT pros are not the primary audience.
Relevance	No	Sufficiently large (197 members) but IT pros are not the primary audience.
Topic Timeframe	Yes	Indefinite.
Ownership	Yes	Eight owners: Rebecca McNaught, Prijo Andrews, Katy Thompson, Michelle Lewis, Sree Lakshmi Venda, Christina Ronquest, Niki Pettit, Kristie Nock.
Activity Level	Yes	Multiple active channels with postings in the past few months.

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