InfoSENTRY
Quality Assurance (QA) Review and
Independent Verification And Validation (IV&V) in a
Client Relationship Management (CRM) Project
InfoSENTRY conducted an independent quality
assurance (QA) review for a $13 million "Client Relationship Management"
(CRM) planning project in a state Department of Health and Human Services
(DHHS). The agency had contracted with a consulting firm to develop a plan for
a Federal project involving implementation of a Client Relationship Management
system. The CRM objective was to unify data entry and client and case tracking
for multiple programs in the health and human services agency.
When the agency submitted the consulting
firm’s plan to the Federal government for approval and funding, the Federal
agency questioned the plan’s methodology, its findings regarding the CRM
project, and the consulting firm’s recommendations for a several hundred
million dollar implementation project. The state’s Chief Information Office
(CIO) and information resource management agency contracted with InfoSENTRY to
conduct a quality assurance audit as a check between the consulting agency’s
position and the Federal agency’s position on the plan’s merits.
InfoSENTRY’s team followed a methodology
consistent with Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
guidelines and the state’s QA guidelines. Those guidelines specified a research
approach involving extensive documentation examinations, stakeholder
interviews, and content analyses. The document examinations involved reviews of
hundreds of project meeting minutes, status reports, and planning documents.
InfoSENTRY conducted stakeholder interviews with agency senior managers,
project managers, project staff, information technology staff members, and
county human service agency directors throughout the state. InfoSENTRY’s quality audit resulted in 24
findings and recommendations for improving project management before it
received a full approval by the CIO’s organization to advance to the next level
of operation.
InfoSENTRY also performed an independent
verification and validation (IV&V) review of the CRM’s project plan. The
review examined the vendor’s plan deliverable against (1) Federal plan
requirements, (2) state information technology planning requirements, and (3)
the vendor’s contract requirements. The
IV&V review found that the vendor’s plan had failed to meet Federal plan
requirements and the vendor’s contractual requirements. The review made
specific recommendations for the project to remediate the plan’s shortcomings.
