Project Management Issues and Problems

Project Management There are several issues with respect to the launch of Healthcare.gov. The first is that there are changing requirements. In the ideal situation, the policy requirements would be clearly defined. The team could then work on the project knowing precisely what requirements they are supposed to hit. In the current situation, the requirements are evolving. This is challenging when developing software, or a website, because making a change in one thing can create the need for substantial changes in a number of other areas.

The result is that a change added at the end, unless it is superficial, can set the project timeline back by days or even weeks. This is perhaps the most difficult situation to remedy, because it relies heavily on the participation of outsiders, namely the policymakers who are changing the requirements of the system. Worse, they have imposed a specific target date, so these new changes only serve to undermine the ability of the production team to reach that target date.

At this point, there needs to be a drop-dead date where nothing new can be added or changed to the project, but will rather have to wait for a subsequent iteration. The first version of the project needs to be allowed to go ahead, and updates can be made later if need be. Iteration and revision needs to be between phases, not in the middle of the phases.

The problem arises because of the third party intervention; the role of the project leaders at this point is to cut out this third party intervention until the iteration and revision phase, which will be post-launch. The second issue evident here is that there is no clear cut goal to which the team is working. In addition to the shifting requirements, there are multiple definition of success. These definitions need to be prioritized.

The designers need to know if being on time is important, if certain functionality is important, or what the objectives for the project are. Knowing what the success measures are will help the design team to ensure that the project hits those measures. There is nothing inherently wrong with having multiple success measures, but they need to be prioritized.

The reason for this is so that if a decision arises where a compromise between measures must be made, the team has a sense of what compromises are more acceptable than others. A third problem is that there is limited pre-launch testing. Under normal circumstances, the website would be built, and then subject to testing in its final form. This allows the designers to see where there are problems, and address them prior to launch. The current state of affairs has only limited pre-launch testing.

At best, this will test basic functionality, and even that is not a given. Testing post-launch is pointless -- the market will be doing the testing at that point. The users will find all the bugs, and they will become frustrated with the website when they do. Moreover, with users trying to use the site, and the much higher number of eyeballs watching (from bloggers to consumers to the President) the pressure will be much greater to fix any problems. And the time frames will be tighter.

The fixes might not be tested if this happens after launch. This is why it is important to test pre-launch. Launching with bugs and errors that were preventable has no positive outcome, but it is the situation that the project is presently facing. A fourth issue with the project at present is that the site will.