While California's new Appeals Case Management System is six weeks early, the project still has optimizations to complete before fulfilling its user experience mission.
The State Hearings Division of the Department of Social Services sponsored the project, and DSS, the Department of Health Care Services and Covered California will use the system, as will stakeholders in all of California's counties.
The system was built from off-the-shelf solution entellitrak from MicroPact, which met many system requirements and was able to be adjusted during the other 14 releases to meet all needs.
The entire project was an agile-hybrid method, the modified rapid application development, that required 30-day sprints, daily scrum meetings and testing after each sprint was complete. This allowed the project to be cut down from a 24-month schedule to a 14-month schedule.
Brian Wong, chief information officer and deputy director of the Information Systems Division for DSS, attributed the project's successful timeline to the ability to create a minimal viable project.
Procurement negotiations were still underway between the state and VIP in April 2017.
The project cost was about $18 million, and another $1.4 million to $1.8 million will be spent on upgrades. The project went live in mid-September; it was originally scheduled for Nov. 1. The system will continue to release updates with new buttons and up to 16 language options.
The vendor, VIP, was paid 80 percent of the cost of each sprint and will receive the rest of the full payment after the Nov. 10 system acceptance test is passed, according to Project Manager Tammie Lopez.
Michael LeLouis, presiding administrative law judge at the State Hearings Division, explained the payment process further in an interview with Techwire.
After system requirements were tested, the vendor was paid by work order authorizations at the end of each sprint cycle, according to LeLouis.
CEO of VIP, Jonna Ward said that the project finished on budget and ahead of schedule because the scope of the project was presented at the beginning.
The entire scope had to be met within each sprint, and there was no backlog to add requirements to if they were not completed, Lopez told Techwire. Each sprint had its own user acceptance testing, and the overall project had a separate testing in the last five weeks before the project went live.
The project's cost was further minimized by the program, rather than the vendor, taking responsibility for all training and change management needs.
The ACMS was an idea Manuel Romero, deputy director of State Hearings, began pushing when he joined the State Hearings Division in 2006. Romero's staff asked for a system that united all parts of the appeals process, a system without character limits that would be more accessible.
