Introduction
A large Agency of the State of California’s mission is to procure, manage and deliver technology systems that support the delivery of health and human services to Californians. The Agency was facing challenges in tracking and managing the deliverables from various technology vendors as part of their project management responsibilities. They decided to develop a Vendor and Deliverables Management solution using Kovair’s platform capability. Just by using Kovair’s drag and drop configuration capabilities they created an effective and sophisticated solution which addressed all of their challenges and pain points in this area.
Challenges
In Agency’s own words: “In 2005, the Agency was established to manage a portfolio of large, complex health and human services information technology projects. It provides project management, oversight, procurement and support services for a multi-billion dollar portfolio of high criticality projects. In this capacity, the Agency coordinates communication, collaboration and decision making among project stakeholders and program-side sponsors of the projects. It manages the procurement, contract negotiations and contract management aspects of the acquisition of technology systems and services. After the procurement phase, the Agency oversees the design, development, governance and implementation of IT systems which serve health and human services programs.”
As a project management organization the Agency deals with technology vendors and manages hundreds of deliverables in a timely fashion. Without a proper management tool the Agency was facing the following challenges:
- Tracking the status of each deliverable
- Implementing and following a process for review and approval of each deliverable consistently
- Responding to vendors’ claims in the context of a deliverable with traceable evidence
- Acting on various tasks related to deliverables without a proper “Alert System”
- Managing who is doing what in the context of each deliverable
Kovair ALM Solution
Kovair Application Lifecycle Management Solution provides a rich and configurable, global platform for implementing Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process, collaborating on the entire development cycle and tracing implementations back to original requirements. It ensures that all the stakeholders are working on the same source of information, no matter where they are located, and that there are no last minute surprises.
The main features of Kovair ALM are:
- 100% Web based for global access without any client side software.
- Single data repository catering to all the modules of ALM – Requirements, System Architecture, Design Elements, Tests, Defects and Change Requests
- Fully configurable by the users through simple mouse clicks without the need of coding
- Built-in Workflow Process and Policy Engines for reviews and escalations.
- Document Management and Attachment capabilities for collaborative review and approval of documents.
- Import facility to facilitate importing artifacts from Microsoft Word documents or Excel spreadsheets.
- Support for creation of comprehensive real-time Word reports.
- Excellent Reporting capabilities with Dashboards, Word, Excel and Crystal Reports.
- SOA based Enterprise Service Bus – the Kovair Omnibus – allowing integration with any best-of-breed third party tool.
The Solution by Kovair
The Agency had a choice of developing a custom application or buying a commercial off the shelf software (COTS) to address the challenges they were facing in the area of vendor management. However they were already using Kovair for Requirements Management within their group and they were familiar with capabilities of Kovair especially in the area of Process Workflow management. They decided to investigate the possibility of configuring a solution using the application platform capabilities of Kovair. While configuring these custom solutions, they used a wide range of simple to advanced functionalities of Kovair. Though perfected over time, the first version was created within a four day period which included training and handholding of the end users. It was configured completely by a group of end users representing different stakeholder groups. No IT resource was used for creating this solution as Kovair does not need any coding, scripting, database knowledge or web programming.
- Solution Highlights:
- Configuration of Entities, Fields and their Relations
- Customization Views, Filters, and Reports
- Automation of Process
- Automation of Policies
Conclusion
With the success of the Vendor and Deliverable Management solution using Kovair platform, the Agency is looking at other related business areas which can be implemented and automated using Kovair platform. Other groups within the Agency are also interested in implementing Kovair for their business application needs after learning about the Vendor and Deliverable Management solution. The Agency is also investigating the chance of integrating their solution with some of the development tools their vendors use including Caliber RM for Requirements Management. Kovair’s Omnibus integration technology allows an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) based integration with various third party vendor tools as well as organization’s own internal applications.