WWW Software Specialist

Department:	CSCF	Effective Date:	May 2006
Grade:	USG 10- 12	Reports to:	CSCF General Computing Manager

General Accountability

Accountable to the CSCF General Computing Manager for facilitating continual improvements to the School presence on the World Wide Web via all means but direct content development.

Nature and Scope

Organizational Relationships

The incumbent is a member of a group of Software Specialists, with responsibilities similar in kind, but specific to the School WWW presence. The incumbent is capable of providing direction for co-op students engaged in assisting WWW content providers.

General Framework

The Computer Science Computing Facility (CSCF) is the primary computing support provider for the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. Its mandate is to provide a leading computing and networking infrastructure to support the research, teaching, and administrative missions of the School. CSCF plans, manages, and monitors the network facilities within the School. This enhanced network capability is connected to the campus backbone network, and hence the Internet, through a single point of presence provided by IST. Services include account administration for non-CSCF owned research machines, back-up services, machine installation and setup, a secure and environmentally controlled machine room, consulting services to the School, electronic mail, local software enhancements, newsgroup access, and web access. CSCF also provides remote distribution of software, such as mathematical text processors, scientific software, statistical packages, compilers, and editors, particularly through the MFCF-developed xhier system. IST maintains the xhier system for the wider campus community.

In response to curriculum demands within the School, CSCF centrally plans, develops, and administers instructional labs. These include special-purpose labs for computer graphics, and real-time programming. More labs may be added in the future, e.g., in the areas of networking and distributed systems. General-purpose instructional facilities include PC-based labs (Macintosh and Windows), and thin-client labs that provide students immediate access to an array of Unix servers. Graduate students in the School are served by thin-client or PC-based systems within their offices. Students are provided Unix accounts for the duration of their academic terms. CSCF maintains its own systems and also provides hardware, software, and consulting support to faculty members and administrative staff across the School who operate their own equipment.

Some of these instructional facilities are planned, developed, and administered also by the Math Faculty Computing Facility (MFCF). Therefore, CSCF will need to coordinate its instructional support activities with those of MFCF.

The computing environment is constantly changing as new technologies are adopted. As a result, staff are continually required to adapt, to develop new skills, and to be aware of emerging technologies and their potential application within MFCF as well as the campus in general. The large size of the computing environment results in non-trivial diversity, and the resulting need for integration.

The working environment for software specialists is fairly unstructured, with the emphasis being placed upon communication, continual improvement, and achieving timely results.

The work environment is typically within private offices. Typical physical stresses are from repetitive strain injuries, resulting from years of typing, and vision problems, resulting from long hours before a screen.

An exception to the typical environment is the occasional need to engage in light to medium lifting of computing equipment; typically workstation-class machines, network components, and mid-sized servers, the most awkward typically being large CRT monitors.

While most work will be conducted by various electronic means from the incumbent's office, it's expected that presentation of classes, and visits to content providers will entail some mobility.

Significant Internal Relationships

The incumbent will have to engage in significant communication with all WWW content providers within the School, which can include just about everyone. The relationship will vary from presenter, to educator, to proselytizer.

Significant External Relationships

The incumbent can communicate effectively with WWW specialists at other installations, whether it be by attending technical conferences and meetings, or by the various forms of electronic communication. Significant external relationships include the sharing of expertise and effort with other campus support WWW groups that affect the School. For example, the departments of Information Systems and Technology, and Graphic Services.

Career Path

Support for the WWW requires more than technical and communications skills. The incumbent has reasonable graphic and WWW design skills, or can be educated to obtain and improve such skills.

There are a variety of abilities involved in these positions. It's expected that a change in position grade is the result of a change in some of the requirements, but not necessarily all. Specialization is reasonable. However there are certain characteristics that are common to all position grade changes. They are:

abstract thinking
breadth and depth of experience and knowledge

general software knowledge and experience
local knowledge

extent and difficulty of responsibilities
disciplined, standardized approach

A senior position requires a sufficient depth and breadth of experience that it can be usefully applied to virtually all relevant problems in the computing environment. An incumbent in a senior position is considered an expert in several areas.

Statistical Data

CSCF has 20 full-time permanent staff, and typically some co-op students and/or part-time student help. The budget is approximately $1.7M. Staff may be involved in other funding, often the result of support for research computing.

The size of the supported community varies with time, generally increasing, so specific numbers can only provide a rough idea of magnitude. As of Spring 2004, there were approximately

70	faculty
60	visitors
2700	undergrads
275	grads
20	administrative staff

in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, aside from CSCF itself. Each of the groups has diverse support needs

Specific Accountabilities

The incumbent can provide, or quickly learn to provide, all aspects of support for the use of the World Wide Web by the faculty. The result of this support will be the continual improvement of the School presence on the WWW.

Work ranges from day-to-day problems that affect the use of the WWW, to long-term planning designed to improve the use of the WWW by the School.

When judged practical, the incumbent explores possibilities, recognizing preferred approaches and solutions. The incumbent judges the extent to which such approaches may be practically pursued in a given situation, as opposed to using standard approaches and solutions. The incumbent uses a disciplined approach to all aspects of problem resolution.

The incumbent adopts an abstract approach to problem solutions, so as to not only be aware of appropriate solutions, but to be able to choose general, scalable solutions to problems where possible. Solutions which can benefit the campus as a whole are ideal.

The incumbent uses general principles to solve specific problems without a detailed knowledge of the systems involved.

The incumbent can function independently and effectively, establishing appropriate priorities for his/her areas of specialization.

The development and maintenance of a useful presence on the World Wide Web imposes a variety of needs, some examples of which are (in no particular order):

Collecting state-of-the-art information concerning the development of WWW technology as it relates to current usage, to the technology used in the University, and to potential acquisitions.
General standards and approaches are needed to facilitate a consistent School WWW presence. Advice and proposals for both the overall School WWW structure, and for that specific to the needs of groups, are required. It's expected that some measure of graphic design skills will be employed, either directly, or indirectly by effectively evaluating the efforts of those more experienced in graphic design and conventional page layout. Content provision is unusual, except as needed for the above.
Correcting, modifying, and creating software to implement forms, interfaces, and information representations are all necessary.
Various aspects of the School WWW presence must be monitored. Examples are compliance of the School WWW space to School standards, performance of the WWW server, adequate access control for the School WWW data, and usage patterns of the School WWW space.
Understanding and using the technology relevant to the WWW, such as

browsers;
authentication;
WWW markup languages such as HTML, XHTML, XML, and CSS;
server side programming languages such as PERL, PHP, and JSP;
WWW content management systems, such as Apple WebObjects;
databases, such as MySql or Oracle.

An understanding of the approaches to reach external target audiences, e.g.:

high school students
undergraduates from other universities
faculty from other universities

Determining the needs of the faculty, staff and student users of the School WWW space requires effective communication with various representative groups and individuals. For example

support staff and related groups
researchers and research groups
instructors and teaching assistants
the School WWW committee

In addition to overall guidelines and standards, the incumbent must be able to propose approaches for specialized needs, typically of researchers and instructors looking for new and interesting ways of conveying their ideas. The terms pedagogical pearls, brain candy (as opposed to eye candy), and pizzazz with content have all been used to describe the desired end result.
A key aspect of this position will be the documentation of School WWW standards, and of easy ways to use them.
While every effort must be made to provide good documentation for the use of the WWW content providers, direct consultation will likely be an ongoing process.
In addition to consultation for individuals, instruction for the various groups of providers is needed. The instruction must be tailored to both the expertise of the audience, and their content needs.

The incumbent is capable of performing any of the above competently, either by employing existing skills or by obtaining the required skills.

A single but very significant example of what the incumbent does not do is the creation of the School WWW pages themselves. The incumbent is to make the creation of effective WWW content possible, not to directly create it.

A fundamental difference between this and most other technical positions is the need for excellent communication skills.

When engaged in front-line support, the incumbent is effective, polite, and comforting to users, who may be very inexperienced with the supported systems. When engaged in more abstract design and development, effective, precise communication with peers, here and elsewhere, as well as productive mentoring and coaching of others, becomes important.