Healthcare.Gov The Crash And The Fix Case Solution
KEY ISSUES AND THEIR ANALYSIS
After the Health Care.gov website failed immediately after its launch investigations began to look for the possible key issues that aided the website to fail miserably. Following are the key issues that caused the website to fail,
- The project was highly complex, to begin with:
This was a critical system that the team tried to develop in a very short period. Although the developer of the system was experienced, their project planning failed and they could not match the standards that were required for such a critical system.
- The developers must have had not enough time to test the system:
Since the aim was to quickly develop a system and deliver it to the public, we assume that the developers did not have enough time to test the system. They did not test the system’s ability to handle and manage load efficiently.
- Uncertainty due to the constant policy changes and project funding:
Since the policies were constantly changing it highly funded to the uncertainty caused after the launch of the website. This uncertainty heavily impacted the plan’s efficiency and changed the project direction every time. Rather than policy changes,some uncertainties were surrounding the project funding as well. It was a huge project with complex features and required a lot of funding.The uncertainties caused in project funding made it extremely difficult to prioritize the scope, identify contracting, initialize proper staffing, and affected the generalization the project.
- Time-frame:
Developers did not receive considerable website specifications to start developing the software until March 2013, which resulted in poor design.
- Lack of proper leadership:
The whole project lacked proper management and leadership. Having no strong leadership also affect the recovery process of the system.
- Ignored warning signs:
Technical is sueswerenoticeable during the development of the portal. According to McKinsey, there was a necessity to hire a COO that could have helped the team at every stage of this complex project.
- Contracts:
The agreed contract with the developer made it difficult to manage them. The decision that was taken, to enter into a business partnership with the contractors on cost-plus contracts led to an absence of any sort of contract management. This also led to a financial limit and overall control over the contractor partners.
Except for all of the aforementioned issues, there was a lack of communication between the policy department and the technology development department. The policy department didn’t communicate well enough with the IT department. The information, developers were fed was only partial, this indicates that there was no proper management and no proper requirement gathering. Requirement gathering a critical phase of software development which was ignored by the management and eventually resulted in the website failure. The project scope was not clearly defined. No sort of risk management was done beforehand. The developers did not test the website before launch and there was no backup plan in case of failure. Inadequate risk management led to this disaster. Time mismanagement was also one of the key issues. The requirements were provided to the developers in March 2013 just a few months before the actual launch of the website. This delay gave little time to the developers to correct their mistakes and setup a testing phase, or completing a proper requirement gathering phase.
RECOMMENDATIONS AND JUSTIFICATIONS
To avoid such software failures in the future following are the recommendations that should be followed,
- Before starting the project, conduct an in-depth analysis of what is required. This Requirement gathering phase is the most critical stage of any software project. This either breaks or makes the project.
- Leadership roles should be clearly defined. Proper management is required to run a project. A team lead is required to overlook the entire process.
- Follow the Agile Software development technique. The Agile technique is simple to implement and provides almost accurate results. In this technique, the developers test their work after every phase of the software development life cycle. This continuous testing after every phase eliminates the chances of any part of the project being launched without being tested.
- Policy and technical solutions should be aligned. It is essential for the project leads to monitor and observe every ongoing policy alterations and ensure that the system stays aligned with it.
- Requirements should be handed over to the developers very clearly. Once a project phase is signed off it should not be reopened again. This will help the developers to focus on the key tasks at hand. Uncertain and sudden changes to the plan negatively affect the development of software projects.........................
- This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution.
