Minnesota Healthmatch Case Study

Minnesota HealthMatch The following paper will give a summery of the state of Minnesota HealthMatch IT project. The summery will include the initial plan for the project as well as what organizational issues that ultimately caused the project to fail. This paper will also include my personal opinion on what type of support an organization top management needs to provide in order for an IT project of this magnitude to succeed.
Overview
In 2002 the state of Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) started an IT project that was to establish an automated system that was to assist the residents of the state in selecting health programs fitting their needs based on their eligibility. The project was started with a budget of $13 million and was to be completed in two years. Krigsman (2011) states “The variety of residents' needs and situations, together with the complexity of state programs and 16,000
eligibility rules, made this a daunting task” (para. 3). The project had three modules that all needed to work together in order for the project to be successful all of which needed to be created as none of them currently existed. These modules included the following: an engine that would look at the health care system eligibility rules, an employee workflow, and a portal for state residents to initiate cases into the system (Krigsman, 2011). While the initial concept of the project was solid the project was destined to fail.
While most IT project fail due to system interoperability issues Minnesota HealthMatch was being constructed from the ground up.
The main reason that the project failed was due to issues within the upper management of DHS and their repeated modifications to the project. There were two significant changes to the HealthMatch system. While these changes did set back the project they were not the only setback. Krigsman (2011) states that the project also failed to meet deadlines on many occasions. In a 2007 report from the Minnesota Legislative Audit Commission both the DHS and its contractor Albion were responsible for the setbacks. This would not be the only report from the Minnesota Legislative Audit Commission. In 2008 the Commission would release another report that would exam delays, cost overrun, and inadequate deliverables. This report would go on to describe the numerous reasons the project failed from management, staffing, business requirements definitions and the technology itself (Krigsman, 2011). All of these issues together would cause any project to
fail.
Conclusion
It is clear that this project had many issues that cause it to fail. Like most projects that fail it is not one thing that is the cause of the projects demise. Krigsman (2011) states the follow three reasons that they project failed.
1. Undisciplined and inexperienced program management in the Department of Human Services
2. An inconsistent, and probably over-extended, vendor
3. Immature and poor tested technology
Overall this project ended up costing the state of Minnesota $41 million and is still not operational. Opinion As a project manager in my organization there are some key items that top management has to provide for any project to be successful. In the organization that I work for there are very distinct departments and a chain of command with in them. If a project is going to succeed it has to have support for the top down or each department head will have other assignments for their personal that will conflict with the project. In addition to this support it is also important that the scope of the project is very clear before the project is started. In my organization there is barely enough time to complete the task at hand so having to do any rework on a project would be almost impossible. This requires very clear goals and task assignments.