Case Study:
The admissions officer at Southeast County Hospital objected “This isn’t what I need!”. Mary sighed, “But this is the software you asked us to create for you.” The officer interrupted her, “I don’t care what I said at the time, this system won’t work for us the way you have it set up. You’ll have to fix it.” Mary warned, “But any fixes are going to set this project back at least four months. My programmers have already worked on the software and testing a lot.” She continued, “It is not possible for them to spend extra months, even minutes.” She suggested to the officer, “Why don’t you work with it for a while and get used to the features? I’m sure you’ll find that it works fine.” Mary’s attempt at reassurance just set off an even more negative response from the admissions officer: “Look, we needed the registration screens in a different format. I can’t read this one. And on top of that, it’s missing the insurance check function.” Mary replied, “But you didn’t ask for any of those features last April when we developed the specifications for the system.” Admissions officer said, “At the time, I didn’t know they were available. Since then, we have got new information and some new federal regulations. You’ll have to make big changes before I can authorize our staff to switch over to this system.”
As Mary reflected on this conversation later, she realized that this had become a recurring problem at the hospital. As head of the IT department, Mary was responsible for upgrading and adding multiple new reporting and information system functions to the hospital’s software on an ongoing basis. It seemed as if the plan for every new effort was met by clients with initial enthusiasm and high expectations. After the preliminary scope meetings, the members of the IT group would head back to the department and work over several months to create a prototype so their clients could see the system in use, play around with it, and realize its value. Unfortunately, more often than not, that sequence just didn’t happen. By the time the programmers and system developers had finished the project and presented it to the customer, these hospital staff members had forgotten what they asked for, didn’t like what they received, or had a new list of “critical features” the IT representative had to immediately include. Later, at the lunch table, Mary related the latest demonstration and rejection meeting to some of her colleagues from the IT group. They were not surprised.
Tom, her second-in-command, shrugged, “It happens all the time. When was the last time you had a department act happy with what we created for them? Look on the bright side—its steady work!” Mary shook her head, “No, there’s got to be something wrong with our processes. This shouldn’t keep happening like this. Think about it. What’s the average length of one of our software upgrade projects? Five or six months?”
Tom thought a moment, “Yes, something like this.” “OK,” Mary continued, “during your typical development cycle, how often do we interact with the client?” Tom replied, “As little as possible! You know that the more we talk to them, the more changes they ask for. It’s better to just lock the specs upfront and get working. Anything else leads to delays.” Mary objected, “Does it really delay things that much, especially when the alternative is to keep developing systems that no one wants to use because it’s ‘not what they asked for’?” Tom thought about this and then looked at Mary, “Maybe this is a no-win situation. If we ask them for input, we’ll never hear the end of it. If we create a system for them, they don’t like it. What’s the alternative?”
Questions you should answer are:
- Why does the classic waterfall project planning model fail in this situation? What is it about the IT department’s processes that lead to their finished systems being rejected constantly? (15 points)
- Could an agile methodology correct some of these problems? Make some recommendations and explain each of them. (15 points)
- Using the terms “Scrum,” “Sprint,” and “User stories,” create an alternative development cycle for a hypothetical software development process at Southeast County Hospital. (20 points)
- You should identify the people who should be part of the Scrum team, roles of the Scrum Master, and the Product Owner. You should consider various elements in the development cycle, and include several sprints with their sprint backlogs.
Formatting Requirements:
❖ This short paper will be at least 3 (three) pages including tables, figures, and references.
➢ Papers shorter than three pages will lose 5 points for each missing page.
❖ Short-paper assignments must be typed (12 pt. Times New Roman font), double-spaced on standard-sized paper (letter: 8.5″ by 11″) with 1″ margins on all sides.
➢ Using a different font throughout the paper, or using inconsistent fonts (using Times New Roman mostly, but using other fonts in some of the sentences or paragraphs) will lose you 5 points.
➢ If you use spacing less or more than double spacing, you will lose 5 points.
➢ If your paper size is different than the required sized paper, and/or margins are different from 1” for any of the sides, you will lose 5 points.
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