ADDITIONAL RUNNING CASE: THIRD AVENUE SOFTWARE HEALTHCARE
Part 2: Project Scope Management
As one of the two senior programmers at Third Avenue, you have been selected to run the project for developing the healthcare app. You will be joined by the following colleagues on the project team:
Eric, a junior programmer who is considered by his peers to be the author of some of the best code at the company. You have also designated Eric to be the project ScrumMaster.Lia, another talented young programmerBrianna, a marketing representative who has experience in health care from a previous jobJack, the regulatory manager at Third AvenueKendra, the Quality Assurance manager
Remember that project scope management is different in agile projects than in traditional project management. For example, participants in agile projects typically spend less time defining scope in early stages of a project. However, Third Avenue has high hopes for the healthcare app and wants to make sure that all team members work out some basic, crucial requirements before proceeding. Also, agile projects generally require more iterations of working software than in traditional project management, so management must be willing to trust the process once the basic requirements are in place and understood.
To help develop scope, agile and Scrum approaches employ cards, user stories, and technical stories. User stories are often written on index cards and then arrayed on a wall or table top to help the agile team plan how to implement the ideas into the product. Technical stories are then developed from the user stories. Technical stories can contain one or more technical tasks that developers use to chart progress on a sprint board as work is conducted throughout a sprint. This approach facilitates group discussion, which often leads to a much better set of product specifications than the rather simple ideas expressed on the cards.
One of management’s key goals is to have the team develop ideas for completing a minimum viable product (MVP) as soon as possible. An MVP is a streamlined, stripped-down version of a product that can still be released for real-world use and review. It contains a subset of features that will be included in the final version. An MVP must possess several key properties:
It has sufficient usable features and value that users will buy it.These early users will see the potential benefits of the product and trust that it will only improve in later iterations.It provides a feedback loop that will help programmers improve the existing features and add new features with minimal delays.
Remember that the overall budget for the project is $350,000, and Third Avenue management would like to see a finished application available in four months. The MVP version, of course, must be available much more quickly—management wants it to be ready to ship in six weeks. The project team has decided that sprints will be done every two weeks, so the MVP version must be ready to ship for use and review after three sprint cycles. The budget for completing the MVP is $120,000.
Open a new Microsoft® Word document and complete the Tasks below.Save the file on your computer with your last name in the file name. (Example: part 1 tasks _Jones.doc)Click the Choose File button to select and upload your saved document.
Tasks
1. Based on what you have learned in Part 2, complete the project charter you began in Part 1.
2. Part 1 of this case listed the key features needed for the app. The list is quickly summarized here:
A fitness tracker for recording health information, such as blood pressure and cholesterolA medication tracker (electronic pillbox) with a calendar and alarm notificationsAn electronic address book for recording contact data of doctors and other healthcare professionalsAn emergencies list for storing vital phone numbers and addresses to provide quick access to hospitals, urgent care clinics, children, and friends in an emergency. List entries will trigger interactive GPS mapping software to help locate hospitals and other healthcare venues.An emergency information list in which customers store important data about themselves in case it is needed in an emergencyA resources feature that lists links to other popular online health sites, such as WebMDA payment feature that tracks health expenses and allows customers to make related payments through their phonesUsability issues
Using this feature list, develop a set of cards, user stories, and technical stories to describe the software requirements for the healthcare app. Remember from your course readings that user stories describe what users need to do to execute a task or perform a job function, focusing on the “who,” “what,” and “why” of a requirement in a simple, concise way.
3. The “Collecting Requirements” section of Module 5 discusses several methods for gathering requirements, including questionnaires, surveys, stakeholder interviews, prototyping, and context diagrams. Based on your knowledge of agile and Scrum, which of these methods should the Third Avenue team use to collect requirements for the project? Write a two-paragraph response to defend your answer.
Develop an initial scope statement. Make sure to follow the detailed process shown in Module 5. Recall that a good scope statement requires some of the items shown in the following table.
Components of a scope statement
Information from the project charter
Product scope description
Functional and design specifications for developing
software
Product user acceptance criteria
Detailed information for project deliverables
Project boundaries, constraints, and assumptions
References to supporting documents, such as product
specifications or corporate policies
Based on your work in developing the software requirements and scope statement, develop a list of features that will become the MVP for the first iteration of the healthcare app. For example, the programmers’ initial ideas for the app include (a) an electronic address book for recording contact data of doctors and other healthcare professionals; and (b) an emergencies list for storing vital phone numbers and addresses of hospitals and other emergency venues. Should these two items be combined in the MVP version? Consider such issues as you develop your list.
