The state's Child Welfare Digital Services project has started almost half its modules, according to a graphic included in the July 11 stakeholder meeting slide deck. The graphic, which was posted Tuesday, shows that 10 contracts have been awarded since June 2016.
The project consists of about 21 module projects that are contracted to a vendor, who then works in sprints to develop, test and redevelop in iterative cycles under the agile method.
Using the agile method allows the teams to react to the staff's needs and has saved time, said Penni Clarke, executive liaison. She guessed it would have been three years until usable software was delivered.
“Under the monolithic model, we would just be hiring a [systems integrator]," Clarke said at the stakeholder meeting. "Under the agile, we are weeks away, not more than months away from actually delivering some usable software that is going to make a huge difference.”
Monthly meetings with child welfare directors from representative counties offer feedback on the modules as they are developed. At the same time, the meetings help minimize the “information gap,” Clarke said.
“We need to speak with one voice. We’re trying to cover a lot of territory, so we have had various versions of people covering different meetings,” Clarke said. “And you get a little bit of a different picture and people check with other people, and you have to disentangle some things.”
No other project this size has been done in California using the agile method before.
“This is what amounts to a public-sector startup,” Kevin Gaines, digital services director, told stakeholders.
The agency is also undergoing changes in how work gets done, including looking for a contract adviser to help the transition.
The program has borrowed ideas from smaller projects and core counties.
Staff members are focusing on “conversations, not presentations and updates,” Clarke said.
All the while, multiple teams are working on different modules in the eight main categories of what will be the final, integrated system.
“Our goal is to have as many as four to five [modules] under development with discrete development teams as we can reasonably handle together,” Gaines said.
New software, Gaines said, will save the state money, assist counties in integrating information and maybe, eventually allow for a map of how different agencies work on the same case.
“Let’s get off legacy," he said, "and let’s save ourselves $80 million.”
