Minnesota Health Match Information Technology Project Failure
Introduction
There are many reasons that may lead to the failure of a project. Some of the reasons may include poor communication in different departments, inattentive management and shifting requirements. The above factors highly affect information technology projects and may lead to the failure of the project (Baumeister & Ilg 2018). The Department of Human Services of Minnesota closed out the project it was developing because of the organizational issues that are mentioned above. HealthMatch is the name of the project that was closed out in Minnesota. HealthMatch was a multimillion-dollar project and it went to waste.
HealthMatch was a system designed automatically to match all the residents in the area of Minnesota with a suitable or proper state health program. HealthMatch project was a complex project because of the different requirements of the people of Minnesota, situations and state health programs complications and the sixteen thousand rules of eligibility that must be captured. HealthMatch project was started in the year 2002 with the estimated budget of thirteen million dollars and it was expected to be completed in approximate of two years.
HealthMatch Information Technology Project was composed of three key components. They include the workflow of the employee, rules for eligibility of the healthcare system and a portal meant for the client of the state residents to enable cases into the healthcare system. An analysis that was done in the year 2003 by the Legislative Audit Commission of Minnesota reported that the healthcare system had experienced numerous consequential problems. The problems that the healthcare system encountered include oversight weaknesses, errors from the determination of income, misleading insurance information and income estimate of the Department of Human Services not accurately matching the actual income.
Minnesota Public Radio reported that the management of the project had faced major issues that led to the failure of the project. As reported by the Minnesota Radio, the department of human services made slow progress in the development of requirements for the system and made changes that needed restructuring computer code that is completed. The HealthMatch project was shut down after it was designed 10 years ago. The state of Minnesota spent about forty-one million dollars on the HealthMatch project.
Stakeholders
Software development and implementation project always require to include main stakeholders. The three main stakeholders for a software project include the system integrator, the enterprise customer and the software vendor. Most of the failures for a system project are generated and contributed by these three main stakeholders.
In this case of Minnesota HealthMatch Information Technology Project, there was no system integrator simply because the HealthMatch technology was a tradition software product. The software vendor for the HealthMatch technology was Affiliated Computer Services (ACS). The main responsibility of Affiliated Computer Services was solely for integration and technical development.
The enterprise customer for HealthMatch information technology project was the Department of Human Services. According to the analysis in the year 2007 carried out by the Legislative Audit Council of Minnesota, both stakeholders of this software that is the Affiliated Computer Services and the Department of Human Services made a lot of critical errors that were responsible for the software project failure. The Affiliated Computer Services requested $19.4 million for the project that was partially completed. The Department of Human Services, on the other hand, paid $3 million. The report described the two stakeholders as responsible for the problems that encountered the project. The design of the software system was modified substantially twice with each modification change lengthening the development of the HealthMatch Information Technology project (Phan, 2011).
In 2008, another report was carried and expounded the reasons that resulted in the Information Technology failure of HelthMatch project. The Department of Human Services received an everlasting free license for the usage of Vantage Software on the subject of design phase completion of the software project. After the contract of HealthMatch began shortly, the vendor of the software (Affiliated Computer Services) disbanded the Fox Systems personnel that was responsible for the project. This resulted in a shortage in the skills that were required causing problems in the Department of Human Services project qualifications.
The appropriate and required practices of project management that needed to be applied were not adhered to and enforced. For example, project planning, project communication quality management, and project governance were not properly practised in the management of HealthMatch project.
References
Minnesota HealthMatch: A perfect storm for IT failure | ZDNet. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.zdnet.com/article/minnesota-healthmatch-a-perfect-storm-for-it-failure/
Baumeister, A., & Ilg, M. (2018). Real Options in Agile Software Development: Handling the Paradox of Flexibility and Behavioural Stickiness in Project Valuation.
Phan, D. D. (2011). Lessons learned from the failure of a Minnesota’s major e-business healthcare project. International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management, 5(4), 291-304.