NextGen Update

Well. the speed dating I mentioned in my prior post on the subject continues. Since the last post, I got elevated to data steward for Regional business requirements. That's exciting stuff. No, really, it is. I got a golden ticket to go into the NextGen chocolate factory.

Enough fun. INDUS finished the Business Requirements Document draft and the Steering Committee will discuss it tomorrow. Meanwhile, development "sprints" are already happening. A "sprint" is a get-together of people involved in a project to give a focused development on the project. Sprints are typically two to seven days long. Sprints have become popular events among some Open Source projects.

The sprints in the NextGen case are targeted to certain business areas. They aren't too wide in scope because the goal is to get a functioning software module out of the process. Quickly. My sprints come late in the game because I'll be called in on enforcement business needs and we all know that enforcement is the last thing to happen in our business process.

We're not too far off of the schedule I have posted to the door.

The Data Warehouse modernization is running at full speed. Version 1.0 of what's being called SFDW will be released within weeks and we'll be testing the heck out of it. A big concern is that development was taken away from INDUS and brought back in house. This was due to the infinite wisdom of the project team and I hate to say that I suspect that the project won't be as good as it would have been if the team invested themselves in better communicating the requirements.

I'm not sure what's happening with CMD - Compliance Monitoring Data, but it pretty much travels hand-in-hand with the Data Warehouse project because CMD will sit in its own warehouse.

What the heck has happened to NextGen?

Well, it's more like what hasn't happened..

The Governance had to yield to the Extragovernance, which was supposed to overcome all of the issues that had stalled the Governance. About the only thing working in the Governance was the Interfacing Applications Workgroup. Their work products should be on display in the Data Management Community on asdwa.org.

The primary problem has been a total lack of trust and in some respects, transparency. The project team has been laboring under financial uncertainity and the Steering Committee has not been forthcoming with the details of that for some reason. That breeds mistrust in EPA's ability to do this project right.

Now we're shifiing geats into what is system development's version of speed dating. The Extragovernance is shrinking into a group that's involved with rapid business requirements development. I've been asked to be the steward of Regional business needs, so any suggestions you can give me would be very welcome. I'll keep you up to date in the comments section of this blog entry.

- Robert

NextGen and the upcoming Data Management Users Conference

The blog has been quiet for awhile and I decided to throw out a post to get at least the three of us that are going to start up a little conversation about the conference.

A lot of it will be related to the Governance, and in being part of it there are times that I can be clueless on whether or not we're getting something done. Not too long ago I ventured forth on the UAG forum with that thought and some of the State members started reacting in a thoughtful way. That differs from the heavy emotion that has come out from a few members on these calls.

There's tension in the air below the level of the Steering Committee and the hallway conversation will be interesting. As usual, Regions are stuck in the middle, but it provides the opportunity to be the voices of reason.

Congratulations to Chris Smith, late of Georgia now current with Idaho, who is the Region 4 awardee for excellence in data management.

Token Item - Do we need the physical token?

I'm doing something to encourage conversation. We've been using a physical RSA token to do our off-site work that requires access behind the firewall. Now we have the option of the virtual token, but there's questions about whether it's usable to access our network drives. That's a heavier use than putting in your PeoplePlus and filing WebForms. Please share your experience with testing virtual tokens from home by using every access need imaginable. Data Warehouse doesn't count until it's moved to Oracle.

Thanks in advance!

New Governance Roster Posted

Follow the link to see the Governance Roster and see who in Region 4 is participating.  November 2 Governance Roster

Is NextGen a "job killer" or "job creator?"

Well, that depends on who you ask.  If you follow the SDWIS User Community on asdwa.org (user i.d. required) you'll see that there is a wealth of expertise out there that has developed due to the necessity caused by our shacking SDWIS/STATE together with poor open source choices.  There are people in the Community that have developed pretty neat specialties in Tomcat, Java, Oracle, add-ons, XML, etc.  Pretty incredible stuff from a self-sufficient community of over 50 installed systems.

Change is coming, and that's in the form of centralization. When SDWIS is centralized under EPA control, the States and DI lose their ability to create all of those innovative solutions that the Community has been sharing for years.  The people who have developed all of those workarounds and original creations will find themselves with not as much to be responsible for and their ability to solve a problem will be ceded to an EPA contractor.  You can think of the names and wonder if they'll stay in the Drinking Water Program or move on to greener pastures where they can continue to use all of the skills they developed while holding SDWIS, Lab-to-State, ESS, etc., together.

This is a topic that sits out on the edge of things that we in the project Governance consider.  As we incorporate all of our expertise in the Governance, will the expertise evolve to the betterment of the DWP, or will it leave for the next challenge that better suits their skill set?

Comments?

Coordination between Data Managers and Rule Managers at the Regional Level

Team,

It seems that there's a lot of chatter over how SDWIS/STATE does things with regards to DBP compliance decisions, especially in light of how sample schedule requirements and violation reporting requirements are different with Stage 2.  The problem with the chatter is that it's only happening between the Effective Rule Implementation Team and the SDWIS Project Managers.  Regional MDBP Workgroup members were consulted, but the Data Managers were left out on this one.  Worse, it appears that anyone on the Change Control Board or in the Governance knew. I've advocated for the CCB members to get to know their rule managers and let them know that they need to communicate with them whenever the acronym SDWIS pops up in a Rule Workgroup meeting.  Likewise, I've told the M-DBP Workgroup membership that they really need to get to know their SDWIS/STATE manager and learn how the software manages the MDBP business.  One can only hope that communication will improve, but for right now, we must do our part in Region 4.

Nothing New to Report

I got absolutely nothing out of that conference call.  Oh wait, it was one thing - one of OECA's branch chiefs didn't know what enforcement codes we have in SDWIS, what we use them for and why. That's unsettling.  If you were on the call and have something of value you may have found, please share it!  BTW, you can add comments to this post by checking off that you are an anonymous poster.  You're also free to author a post.  You have privileges to post to the blog.