About IT: Technology Support Services

Who Are They and What Do They Do? 

If you’re part of the HBS community, you’ve undoubtedly interacted a time or two with Technology Support Services (TSS). TSS is IT’s first line of service for students, faculty, staff, and even guests. Their presence can be found all over the HBS campus, from student printing services to hoteling spaces to any School-provided computer. This team sits behind the scenes, making things go, and the better they are at doing their job, the less their presence is known. But their service and value to HBS should not go unrecognized. 

TSS supports anyone with an HBS affiliation, including alumni, and they maintain HBS’s technical stability and functionality. Their work ensures that everyone with a connection to the School can handle business. There aren’t many jobs on campus that don’t require computers, and TSS is accountable for the availability and usability of them. Faculty can focus on teaching rather than technical difficulties because TSS expertly handles that for them. TSS owns technology, and the problems that may come with that technology, but they do so collaboratively and with the satisfaction of knowing that they keep everything moving. 

How Do They Stand Out? 

This team places an incredible emphasis on how collaborative they are and how much trust they put in each other to lead, give each other feedback, and share knowledge. When the COVID pandemic hit, TSS had to jump into action. Within a week, they had to image and deploy over three hundred laptops to accommodate a number of work roles that hadn’t existed before. The world was in crisis, HBS was in crisis, but TSS did what they had to do to alleviate some of the panic. Their work was fundamental to bringing the hybrid classrooms to life, making HBS the only Harvard School to maintain a semblance of in-person learning during the pandemic. Their dedication to this community, and their relationships within it, make their work possible. 

This is a team that trusts each other immensely—to handle crisis, to innovate, and to manage the onslaught of service tickets they receive daily. They are the experts in what they do, and rely on each other’s knowledge and know-how. Everyone within TSS, regardless of their title or position, is a leader, teacher, mentor, and student to each other. With the variety of educational backgrounds and working experiences, each member brings their own wealth of knowledge to this powerhouse of a team and to HBS IT.