I’ve written about the failed U.S., Maryland , Oregon and Vermont ACA health exchange website projects. I’ve collected the biggest failures from each of the projects. Most of these findings come from the QA auditors hired for each project. It’s a litany of woe and there are similar issues on each project.
Vermont
- Project controls not consistently applied.
- Change Management: Appears to be very little control over changes in schedule, deliverables or scope. Impact to other project areas are not analyzed or alternatives presented.
- Current weekly status reports have little detail on dependencies, risks or issues.
- Schedule Delays: deliverables shifted to the future without going thru change management process; potential impacts not known or agreed to.
- Plan continues to be reworked and updated, there is no way to report on or assess progress. It is not clear what components will be delivered when. The dates seem to be unrealistic and unachievable. Some dates violate CMS schedule requirements.
- Development (and, later) test, (and, later) prod, (and, later) pre-prod, training and DR environments are not ready as planned.
- Requirements: lack of granularity in scope, definition and traceability; Insufficient detail; Amiguity; requirements not tied to work flows or use cases.
- Vendor staffing not as scheduled (20 unfilled positons) with no staffing plan.
- It is likely that functionality will not be tested until it is too late.
Oregon
- Lack of universally accepted PM processes
- Ineffective communication and lack of transparency
- Poorly defined roles and responsibilities
- Lack of discipline in the change management process
Maryland
- Lack of a schedule
- No single person as the overall PM
- Unclear oversight
- No documented list of features at go-live
- Code moved directly into production
- Lack of integration and end-to-end testing
- Insufficient contingency planning