Consolidating Projects Results in Highly Successful Mobile App

The primary goal of the project was to develop a new mobile application for child care licensing. Due to the inter-relationships occurring between three other active projects, Loblolly requested all projects be assigned and run as a Program rather than individual projects. Loblolly was able to take responsibility for all these related projects without increasing team member size:

1. Weighted Enforcement Standards: The ranking and weighting of facility risks based on the creation of formulas and standards
2. Public Search Enhancements: Developing new public search systems and access
3. Certified Home Tracking: Tracking movements of certified homes between parent agencies
4. Child Care Center Licensing: new mobile application

Prior to the integration of the projects, Loblolly assisted with a technology evaluation to determine the best mobile application development platform to ensure application success.

Once the technology was defined, the project team began organizing stakeholders and identifying end users on which the application process would be profiled. Each of the 4 projects included a detailed business analysis and requirements phase that produced documentation of the As-Is models using swim lane workflows and process diagrams, To-Be models and workgroup facilitations. The As-Is data was collected from various user workgroup sessions using facilitated workflow modeling techniques. By developing these requirements and models for all four applications, we were able to eliminate potential requirement, process and data conflicts between the applications and users. This approach ultimately created an integrated system where data could be collected through the mobile application in the field, the automated weighted system could immediately review and provide recommendations for user actions, actions could be documented and linked to certified homes, homes could be tracked with their actions as they switched between parent organizations and the public could search the client website and review historical actions taken against certified homes or other inspected facilities.

In addition to the management of these projects, the project team provided assistance with the curriculum development for each project, as well as hardware/software training and tablet deployment for approximately 400 users.

In addition to defining streamlined business requirements processes, developing and delivering four applications, developing and providing customized training for 400+ users, the Loblolly project team was also able to accomplish the following goals:

1. Defined new project management activities and templates based on a tailored DIR Texas Project Delivery Framework Model to speed execution without sacrificing quality
2. Developed, implemented and mentored client staff on workgroup facilitation techniques to include all stakeholders and improve overall customer satisfaction
3. Defined standard project communication, review/approval, status reporting and documentation methods using SharePoint
4. Provided training to client staff on conducting Business Process Analysis, training deployment and workgroup facilitation to assist future projects at the operational level of the IT Application Development Department

Loblolly was responsible for project plans, business analysis phases, project status reporting, securing stakeholder buy-in at all levels, project communication, producing As-Is and To-Be model documentation for review and validation, managing internal and external vendor development resources through staff augmentation and deliverables-based contracts, testing, training and final deployment /rollout of all 4 projects.