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Information Technology Projects
WASHINGTON STATE
Project Planning Services for the Automated Client Eligibility System (ACES) Project
The Project – ACES is a FAMIS (Family Assistance Management Information System) supporting Washington State’s administration of the Federal Title IV-A programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Food Stamps, Medicaid, and state programs including General Assistance. ACES provides a statewide on-line application that administers the supported programs with consistency, timeliness and accuracy. ACES also interfaces with a wide variety of Federal and State systems which provides the state with a vehicle to prevent welfare fraud by detecting misrepresentation of claims and duplication of benefit payments to recipients.
The ACES project was a large scale systems integration contract to modify another state’s FAMIS for Washington. The system is a highly complex, tightly integrated COBOL application with a MVS operating system, CICS transaction monitor and IMS database. The application has approximately 2,000 KLOC of executable code. The application supports a client environment of 3,000+ users that are located throughout the state at seventy regional community service offices and headquarters in Olympia, WA.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting provided project planning and project management consultation to a "Big 5 Consulting Firm" who had contracted with the State of Washington for this project. Following is a brief description of some of the ways in which we assisted our customer:
- Served as facilitator in defining the project scope with the various teams.
- Developed an integrated project plan using our customized MS Project tool. The project plan consisted of more than 6,200 tasks and included the efforts of 15 teams.
- Determined the schedule and resource requirements for the project.
- Regularly tracked and reported project status to executive sponsors, management and technical teams.
- Managed project schedule by extensively employing advanced critical path methodology and “slack”.
- Tracked and monitored resource usage.
- Provided project management advice to both the technical and management teams.
- Developed a detailed methodology to plan and track system maintenance and enhancement work after initial system implementation.
TEXAS
Senior Information Technology Architect Services for the Department of Human Services TIERS Project
The Project – Replacement of a very large legacy system of approximately 10 million lines of code. Rhodes Consulting, provided overall IT architecture direction and oversight to ensure that the application and infrastructure architecture of TIERS meets the requirements of TIERS and is in compliance with the architecture of the overall strategy of the Texas Department of Human Services (TDHS).
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting is providing information technology architect services and oversight. The following is a brief description of some of the ways in which we are assisting our customer:
- Guided and reviewed the methodology and artifacts for the development of the infrastructure and application.
- Performed research, as needed, and recommended architecture strategies to accomplish project requirements.
- Ensured that stakeholders are included in major decisions and technical directions.
- Informed management on the business implications of technical strategies.
- Reviewed, modified, and approved System Requirements Specifications (SRS), System Architecture Specifications (SAS), and System Test Specifications (STS) for technical validity.
- Defined corrective actions for object oriented methodology.
- Validated user requirements and architecture for module development.
- Reviewed (and in some cases, defined) approaches to develop methodology, solution descriptions (such as security), and identified risks and mitigation strategies.
Project Management Services for the Department of Human Services TIERS Project
The Project – TIERS is a very large, web-enabled system that is replacing a large existing legacy system.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting is the serving as the Project Planner for this project. The following is a brief description of how we are assisting our customer:
- Using our customized MS Project tool, we developed an integrated master plan for a large project team of about 220 staff. The project plan has approximately eighteen thousand (18,000) tasks defined.
- Worked closely with the teams to define the scope of work and tasks dependencies.
- Developed overall schedule and scope of project.
- Where the project plan schedule was out of compliance with project needs, assisted with identification of corrective actions to resolve the scheduling issues.
- Updated the project plan weekly and provided weekly deliverables to executive sponsors and management of project schedule and status.
- Weekly, provided an integrated project plan of all TIERS projects.
- Provide project management for sub-projects, as needed.
- Administered and helped drive the issue management process for the project.
Software Test Management for the Department of Human Services TIERS Project
The Project – TIERS is a very large, web-enabled system that is replacing a large existing legacy system.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting provided management of the System and Customer Acceptance test teams. The following is a brief description of how we are assisting our customer:
- Developed testing strategy to ensure the quality of the application and to discover bugs and other issues before implementation.
- Conducted tests to ensure that the application met system requirements.
- Worked collaboratively with project teams to define and implement test tools
- Managed the test resources and test teams.
Software Reuse Services for the Department of Human Services
The Project – Provide technical leadership in the development and deployment of software reuse for a large Management Information System (MIS) enterprise. Overall effort was focused on developing the core technical infrastructure needed for software development and initiating the software deployment.
Our Role – Provided consultation to agency management for software reuse strategies. The following is a brief description of how we assisted our customer:
- Developed the overall roadmap for software reuse, the Project Management Plan (PMP) and the High-Level Project Plan (HLPP)
- Developed standards of reuse.
- Developed System Requirements Documents (SRDs) for the Software Asset Library and for the Security Requirements.
- Reviewed the detailed design documents and assisted in selecting and developing objects for the library.
- Worked with management and technical teams to identify and acquire resources needed for overall software reuse effort.
Project Management Services for the Department of Human Services Claims Management Systems (CMS) Project
The Project – The Long Term Care Claims Management System (CMS) is an umbrella incorporating a number of automated systems to provide a comprehensive and integrated claims payment process. The project includes support of regular production operations for the TDHS portions of CMS, maintenance and enhancement of systems currently in production to provide streamlined claims processing for LTC programs.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting provides Project Management services for this project. The following is a brief description of how we are assisting our customer:
- Managed the business process re-engineering, system development and implementation of a new method for service providers to submit forms to enroll a new client into Medicaid, assign the client to a LTC program, and assign services.
- Assisted the customer with implementing a release methodology for managing the maintenance/enhancement phase of CMS. This involved defining the structure of releases and developing a process for defining and tracking the components of the releases.
Private Sector
"Big 5 Consulting Firm" Data Center Move from Tampa, Florida to Boulder, Colorado
The Project – The data center in Tampa, Florida, was a center for disaster recovery purposes. It had more than 600 customers for disaster recovery testing and disaster recoveries and a significant portion of the business centered on preparedness for hurricanes. The project was to move the data center from Tampa to Boulder, Colorado, with no disruption in services. The scheduled date for completion of the move was fixed because hundreds of customers’ test and recovery plans were dependent on the date.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting provided project planning and project management consulting. The following is a brief description of how we assisted our customer:
- Defined scope of work and task dependencies which included definition of a many business processes that would be moved to Boulder or to another facility.
- Developed the detailed project plan which represented the full scope of work including milestones with committed dates.
- Regularly updated the project plan and communicated the project status across multiple sites (Tampa; Sterling Forest, NY; Gaithersburg, VA; Olympia, WA).
- Provided project management consultation to the executive in charge of the move.
Project Planning Services for the Cook County JD Edwards Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Project
The Project – Cook County implemented a JD Edwards ERP software to manage the payroll, human resource and other finance systems. The project team consisted of approximately fifty resources and involved Cook County personnel, IBM personnel and sub-contractors.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting provided project planning and project management services. The following is a brief description of how we assisted our customer:
- Developed a detailed project plan through interviews with team leads to determine of tasks, task dependencies and resources required to complete the identified tasks.
- Managed weekly process to update the plan, track progress, and forecast task completion.
- Prepared and presented to executive management and project teams a weekly progress report on the status of the project.- Fixed assets
Project Planning Services for Lucent Infrastructure Support
The Project – IBM Global Services assumed contractual responsibility for supporting Lucent Technologies computing infrastructure. Rhodes Consulting assisted Lucent Technologies and IBM Global Services in a project to roll out a distributed computing hardware and software infrastructure and document approximately 200 procedures governing the support of the infrastructure.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting provided project planning services for this project. The following is a brief description of how we assisted our customer:
- Developed a detailed project plan using our customized MS Project tool
- The project file was separated into small spreadsheet files which were electronically distributed to task owners in multiple locations, including Summers, NY. Task owners updated the status of their tasks in the spreadsheet files and returned the files electronically to the project planner. These files were used to update the master project plan using a Visual Basic application.
- Provided a project status report weekly which included a one-page summary of the past week’s accomplishments, a count of the number of documents per development stage, and any issues that needed to be addressed.
City of Tucson
City of Tucson Year 2000 Compliance
The Project – The City of Tucson Information Technology Department maintains information technology applications for city agencies. All applications had to be reviewed for Year 2000 compliance and modified where necessary.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting constructed and managed the project plan for the department’s Year 2000 compliance. The following is a brief description of how we assisted our customer:
- Interviewed analysts and programmers for all systems in defining the scope of the effort.
- Documented and inventory of systems and their status for Year 2000 compliance.
- Constructed an integrated project plan for Year 2000 compliance, including tasks, estimated work, and assigned resources.
- Updated the project plan on weekly basis and reported the status to executive sponsors, management and project teams.
Other Projects
WASHINGTON STATE
Project Management Support for Welfare Reform
The Project–In 1997, the legislature of Washington State redefined welfare and allowed less than 6 months for the changes to be implemented. Team consisted of approximately 100 program managers, policy makers, and social workers representing the different human services of Washington state.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting Services, Inc, (RCSI) provided project management support to the State executive in charge. Following is a brief description of some of the ways in which we assisted our customer:
- Collaborated with approximately 12 teams to:
- Define how to accomplish objectives
- Define project tasks, develop a schedule, and monitor progress
- Develop and implement a process to detect and resolve issues
- Implemented processes such as Quality Assurance to help the project identify issues before they became problems.
- Served as project manager, as needed
- Due to the complexity and scope, we also worked closely with other agencies to ensure inter-agencies efforts were defined and coordinated.
- Since the project executive was not an experienced project manager, advised the executive and other managers on how to apply project management principles for the successful completion of the project.
Management Consulting Services for the Special Commitment Center
The Project – Washington State was held in contempt of court by a federal judge because of inadequate response to requirements of the court.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting provided management consulting services and collaborated with agency teams to define the necessary actions to address the "contempt of court" ruling and assisted in defining an effective communication strategy that would satisfy the court. These actions were documented in the “Injunction Response Report”.
Judge Dwyer was very complimentary of the efforts of Rhodes Consulting and stated in his findings “Ongoing management consultation was provided in order to develop an extensive “Injunction Response Report”, a comprehensive and well-organized presentation of the program’s goals, objectives, action plans and achievements.”
Facilitation and Support of an Organizational Restructuring Project
The Project – The Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) in Washington State announced that the Division of Development Disabilities (DDD) was to be merged with Aging and Adult Services into the Aging and Disability Services Administration (ADSA).
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting proposed an approach that management subsequently accepted and, as a result, facilitated the successful reorganization. Following is a brief description of some of the ways in which we assisted our customer:
- Presented to executive management an approach for defining the new organizational structure that combined the agency mandated reorganization with the existing management improvement initiatives already in process in DDD.
- Provided a Transition Manager to facilitate the transition by guiding teams through reorganization discussions, documenting business processes and, in some cases, defining new business processes where none existed before.
- The Transition Manager produced a report that documented the facilitated efforts of the teams, the proposed reorganization, the risks to be monitored, and the subsequent transition activities to be encountered.
Project Assistance for the Division of Developmental Disabilities
The Project – Washington State Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) was being criticized by the legislature and other stakeholders for inadequate and inconsistent business practices.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting served in many roles during this project such as, project manager, facilitator, and project planner. Working with program managers and subject matter experts, Rhodes Consulting has been able to assist in improving the division's credibility through developing processes to successfully initiate and execute projects. Many of the projects undertaken involved improving business processes such as client assessment of needs, and client service quality monitoring. Following is a brief description of some of the ways in which we assisted our customer:
- Collaborated with and managed teams to define project requirements and scope of work.
- Managed critical projects which often included those with information technology components.
Project Management Services for Fircrest Downsizing Project
The Project – The national trend has been to move clients with development disabilities from an institutional setting to community settings. This project involves extensive planning and implementation efforts to assist in the downsizing of one of these institutions, Fircrest. Fircrest School is an institution for persons with developmental disabilities in Washington State, in keeping with the national trend, the Washington State Legislature provided for the downsizing of that school. This project requires extensive planning, project management and implementation. The challenges are project oriented, as well as political and human relations.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting is providing project planning management services in support of this project. Following is a brief description of some of the ways in which we are assisting our customer:
- Provide planning expertise to describe a comprehensive approach for accomplishing the downsizing while maintaining client health and safety.
- Provide project management best practices mentoring to the project manager director.
- Design and implement project management processes such as an issue management, change management and risk assessment planning.
- Utilize facilitation expertise in developing business processes to aid in downsizing.
Project Planning Services for Fircrest Downsizing the PSRA Project
The Project – The State of Washington is implementing Civil Service Reform, Collective Bargaining, and Contracting Out, as well as a new human resources system simultaneously. This is a massive, multi-year project.
Our Role – Rhodes Consulting is providing project planning support for this endeavor. Following is a brief description of some of the ways in which we are assisting our customer:
- Work with the teams that have subject matter expertise to develop the scope, tasks and schedule of much of the rule making portion of this effort.
- Define this effort using our customized version of MS Project. The project plan of approximately three thousand (3,000) task is regularly maintained and tracked.
- Assist the project managers in capturing project status.
- Report project status weekly to management and use critical path methodology extensively.
