Purpose Though UMPhysicians has, by all accounts, whole-heartedly assumed best practices within the approaches taken for the development of its software, I would contend that these approaches themselves have hindered our organization’s ability to serve our various clientele through time, specifically impeding our own ability to adapt quickly enough to an invariably changing industry and the stringent requirements placed upon it by governmental and commercial agencies alike. Here, in looking toward our manner of product build and implementation, specifically where that of GE HealthCare Flowcast/IDX (IDX) is concerned, I wish to propose an embrace of agile methodology over our prior and standard use of the waterfall method. From my perspective, though not being privy to a genuine cost analysis, yet being well versed in areas that do impact our financial well-being – most notably where challenges in back-end scenarios could be met more immediately and internally rather than hired out and realized on an external vendor’s own timeline – I will provide an analysis that clearly displays the benefits of agile methodology over our current use of waterfall. With this essay, I intend to provoke change, though I do understand that further consideration and discussion will be required prior to any realization of meaningful change. Scenario Analysis UMPhysicians’ approach to software development clearly often involves employment of the traditional and linear waterfall methodology.
Cost and resource needs are higher for traditional than Agile due to Waterfall’s sequential development phase of all requirements determined in the beginning, software design and finally implementation of master design. The need for all information up front takes substantial time to gather and the sequential design does not allow for project changes as the flow enters into the programming stage. With Agile, costs remain low because there exists an incremental and iterative approach to the project, meaning less time is used to collect all requirements up front, the
Unit 12- Valpak Case Study Summary The transformation at Valpak was done in an effort to revamp the company’s business structure to compete with the ever-growing technology market. The company wanted to completely reorganize and transform their organization using Scrum/Kanban agile methodologies. Prior to implementing agile, Valpak utilized the traditional waterfall management approach. They noticed that with this approach they were having issues with IT alignment, missed deadline and a lot of unplanned work. After various meetings with supervisors to discuss concerns and issues, they decided to try Agile.
“Agile” was first introduced in 2001, by a team of software engineers looking to improve their adaptiveness and responsiveness to ever-changing requirements. Not knowing where to begin, the team began by formulating principles, which they would use to guide their new development process. Which, in turn, lead to the creation of the Agile Manifesto, and thus a new methodology was born.
The SAP implementation project team has investigated major problems when they initially have been dealing with a waterfall approach, for example, the out-of-date information about system requirements, wrong resources allocation and isolated business process. Therefore, they shifted to the agile approach, suggesting it will cope with the arisen difficulties more efficiently (Ferley, 2017).
One of the initial steps in researching a problem is to know exactly what the problem is and compose a problem statement that unambiguously identifies and defines the problem to research. Sekaran (2003) said, “No amount of good research can find solutions to the situation, if the critical issue or the problem to be studied is not clearly pinpointed” (p. 69). The area of research for this paper focuses on software development, in particular, the study of agile software development methodologies and if these methodologies are successful in delivering software on time, within budget, and includes the requested features.
In defining the selection and acquisition framework for the healthcare information system under consideration, the creation of an Information technologies (IT) strategic plan is first needed. By definition, an IT strategic plan defines in very specific terms how a proposed IT system will align with and contribute to the strategic plans, objectives and goals of a healthcare organization (Davis, Adams, 2007). The process of selecting and acquiring the healthcare information system under development needs to take into account change management, process-based, systems-integration and lifetime cost of ownership considerations. In addition to these factors, a balanced scorecard of system performance and its contribution to each department in the organization also needs to be assessed (Chow, Ganulin, Haddad, Williamson, 1998). Healthcare system planning and evaluation has progressed beyond the basics of defining functional performance aspects of software towards the inclusion and encompassing of how roles in a healthcare enterprise can be made more efficient from their use (Spil, LeRouge, Trimmer, Wiggins, 2011). The process of selecting and acquiring the information system then must be designed to take into account stakeholder's needs while also delivering financially significant value to the enterprise over time (Davis, Adams, 2007). The intent of this analysis is to define how the
I will give not only the benefits of implementing the Agile method, but also the loss of not implementing. In addition, I will emphasize how unique and outstanding our company can be after using the Agile method.
Tom Westfall has worked in the information technology field for over 30 year, during that time Tom has managed and developed applications for a wide verity of companies. Once coming to Pittsburgh, PA in 2010 to work at Omnyx LLP, he and his wife settled in the Mexican War Street, on Pittsburgh’s Northside. While working at Omnyx LLP, he became very familiar with Agile and Scrum and received his scrum master certification and has used this knowledge to help teams become more predictable. He has also been working with the Agile community in Pittsburgh to grow agile adoption and knowledge in the area. In the last six years he has also gotten the SAFe Agilist (SA) certification. Tom came to PNC as a Project Manager III in 2015, to bring the Agile
A team of clinical adoption strategists from Cerner met with representatives at the acute care hospitals. These process team leaders, who are subject matter experts for the team they represent, will serve to ensure that all designs, decisions, and work flow changes are discussed at the hospital level and communicated so all have an equal voice in this project. These process team leaders will meet with all levels of staff at their hospital to gather information related to current processes and practices. The IT Clinical analysts are assigned to work with each process team to facilitate, gather, and support completion of assigned tasks. This information will be shared with all other process teams at weekly meetings as they work to implement a standardized, enterprise wide clinical information system. Cerner Solution Architects or SA’s, are assigned to each team and will guide us through this process every step of the way.
This article by Phillip A. Laplante and Colin J. Neill of Penn State University explores the rumors of the demise of the waterfall model. The Waterfall process model progresses software products linearly from conception, through requirements, design, code, and test (Neill, 2004). The Waterfall method was developed in 1970 by Winston Royce when computer systems were monolithic, number-crunching entities with rudimentary front ends and users’ needs were filtered through the partisan minds of the computer illuminati building the systems (Neill, 2004). Most systems built in that time did not pay much attention to input from stakeholders, which is a good environment for the Waterfall method to work in – an environment where requirements seldom change after specification due to the fact that users are not involved in the development and therefore cannot provide feedback regarding incorrect assumptions or missing features (Neill, 2004).
Agile methodology practices adopted in the private sector produced a much higher rate of return on each project following Agile methodology (Vajre 2014, para. 6). Using Agile methodology development often helps determine early in the project if the project is worth pursuing and if the scope needs adjustment for a successful project conclusion (Elfanbaum 2014, para. 7). Agile methodology develops the most important parts of the project first so that the teams can make sure they are on target with the overall project goal (Elfanbaum 2014, para. 9). The Agile methodology will not prevent failure but will reduce the chances of failure. The reduction of risk in a project requires risk identification and risk mitigation techniques dealing with the risk (Heusser 2013, para. 6). The Healthcare.gov site appears to have followed a Waterfall Methodology approach by testing and then attempting to fix software defects without testing the rest of the system for additional problems. The Waterfall Methodology no longer works well in complex development cycles. More robust applications that need phase development with required regression testing along the way should require using the Agile methodology (Holler 2014, para. 5). One of the biggest obstacles to the government adopting the Agile methodology is an out of date procurement practice. To address the outdated system, the U.S. Digital Services (USDS)
how they should be applied, none have used project data to clearly conclude which one is
Agile techniques should be used to solve the current issues faced by the company as agile techniques normally being used by the software industry help the business to act in response under the unpredictable situations faced. In Agile methodologies opportunities are been provided to evaluate whether the project is under the direction all through its development cycle. All this is being accomplished with the help of regular tempo kept in work, and the teams must show a product which is having the desired potential.
Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams within an effective governance framework, with "just enough" ceremony, that produces high quality solutions, in a cost effective and timely manner which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders [1].
In this software company, the agile methodology is followed for developing clinical software for hospitals by using an empirical process control model called scrum to effectively manage and complete projects. An agile development team consists of a group of people who collaborate to create new software systems and modify existing software systems (Tripp, Riemenschneider, & Thatcher, 2016). Analysts, programmers, designers, database administrators, systems engineering, quality testers and project management represent are some of the broader skill sets that can encompass the team. In an agile team, everyone who is needed to fill a role must be part of the project team necessary to complete the project (Highsmith, 2002). Meier and Ivarsson, (2013), reported that in 2011, in a survey collected from over 6,000 respondents from several countries showed the benefits that were obtained by implementing agile; 84%