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There is a significant amount of change underway in IT. Some projects have been put on hold, while new ones have been started. This direction is coming from a group responsible for aligning IT with the organization’s strategic direction called the IT Steering Committee. IT will provide a monthly update to communicate what the IT Steering Committee has prioritized, and what IT is working on.
In This Edition
Who is the IT Steering Committee and Why Do They Exist?
The IT Steering Committee (ITSC) exists to direct, review and approve IT initiatives in alignment with the organization’s strategic plan. The steering committee is not involved in the day-to-day management of projects, rather the steering committee directs IT strategy for the Idaho Department of Lands as a whole. The IT Steering Committee is responsible for approving and denying project requests, and deciding when to start, end and pause projects.
The Steering Committee is made up of representatives from each division in the organization:
- Bill Haagenson – Deputy Director
- Donna Caldwell – Support Services Division Administrator
- Michele Andersen – Operations Division Administrator
- Craig Foss – Forestry and Fire Division Administrator
- Jim Elbin – Trust Land Management Division Administrator
- Mick Thomas – Minerals, Navigable Waters, Oil & Gas Division Administrator
Mark McMinn, IDL’s new CIO, facilitates the steering committee’s monthly meetings. Tom Kearns also attends the meeting as a non-voting member representing Technical Services.
A Little Background: LUMA
The Luma Project is a statewide project undertaken by the State Controller's Office affecting all state agencies. The scope of the project is very large. Just one piece of it is to replace the State Controller’s accounting system, among other functions. Luma will replace STARS, which was implemented in 1987. The Luma project includes a significant update to the state’s approach to accounting. Since the project touches all state agencies it is very complex. Unfortunately the project is a year and a half behind schedule, and has delayed go live twice already.
The Luma project has a new project manager, Scott Smith. He is changing the approach the team is taking in hopes of getting the first release of the system out in 2023. The latest go live date for the Luma financial system has not yet been announced, but it will either be Jan 1, 2023 or July 1, 2023.
Due to the scale and urgency of the Luma project, IDL's IT Steering Committee set the Department of Lands' piece of Luma as IT’s highest priority. Consequently the IT Steering Committee has put all IT projects that touch Navision on hold. Navision is IDL’s financial system. This is explained in more detail below.
Restructure of IT Work: Scrum
The new CIO, Mark McMinn is introducing into IT a new approach to project work called “Scrum.” Scrum is a term taken from the huddle in Rugby. Mark has scheduled Scrum training in early August for IT, the IT Steering Committee, and a few business stakeholders. The Scrum approach will allow IT to focus on work in small 2-3 week increments. Moving away from large requirements documents and large releases, IT will prioritize small improvements. Scrum will introduce several significant improvements:
- Business stakeholders will be able to give feedback on functioning software each 2-3 week increment!
- Frequent process improvement - every 2-3 weeks IT will ask what it could do better next time!
Scrum will commit certain IT resources to “Scrum Teams.” There will be 2 Scrum teams, which means IT’s capacity will be limited to 2 projects at any one time. The two projects the IT Steering Committee assigned the two Scrum teams are described below, but let’s first discuss the projects that have been put on hold.
On Hold
Due to the Luma project (see above), and the fact that IDL has limited IT resources, the following projects were put on hold:
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Landfolio: Grazing, Crop, Conservation, Water Rights, Land Records and (limited) Navigable Waters functionality is live. The project was preparing for the final round of testing and go live of the remaining programs. The project’s codename for the release was “Iteration A”. Uncertainty about the Luma schedule created significant risk to the schedule and budget. For this reason the IT Steering Committee put the Landfolio “Iteration A” go live on hold until more is known about the Luma project. Follow future issues of the IT Steering Committee Newsletter for additional updates on Landfolio.
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Timber Settlement and Scaling: This project was intended to replace both the old scaling handhelds, custom developed Scale Data application, and the Timber Billing module in Navision. Uncertainty with the Luma go live made it impossible to make the right long term design decision on the accounting foundation of the Timber Settlement system. For this reason the project was put on hold until more is known about what Luma will look like.
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M-Files: In order to focus resources the M-Files project has also been put on hold. The Purchasing vault in development has been completed and released to production. Requirements gathering for the Admin vault was recently completed. The project team is tying up loose ends in order to resume the work when it is reprioritized by the IT Steering Committee.
IT’s Two Scrum Teams
As mentioned above, Mark McMinn is introducing the “Scrum” process. Moving forward there will be a limited capacity of two projects, corresponding to the two scrum teams in IT. The IT Steering Committee approved the following projects:
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Priority 1: New Navision (& Luma): Microsoft’s support of the version of Navision IDL is currently using (Navision 2013 R2) expires January 9, 2023. It will continue to function after this day, but will have increased security risk. Since this system is business critical to IDL the IT Steering Committee has set this as IDL’s #1 priority. While other IT projects are on hold IT will focus on replacing the old version of Navision with the newest version of Navision. This project team is working closely with the State Controller’s Office to integrate New Navision with Luma.
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Priority 2: ESRI Regulatory: IT Steering Committee approved the new project called ESRI Regulatory. The ESRI Regulatory project will replace the LRM Forestry & Fire Regulatory Portal with an ESRI solution that will streamline the Notification/Compliance issuance process. IT and GIS have begun working together on the project. The team will work closely with users for fast and frequent feedback.
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