NYS Forum

2007-2008 Best Practices Award Winners

MANAGEMENT
NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services
Critical Legacy Information System Migration

Problem

The Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) has embarked on a very large and essential effort to migrate their critical legacy information systems to a modern, extensible, web based platform. This effort encompasses the migration of fingerprint processing, criminal and civil history processing, sex offender management, and fingerprint identification. The driving forces for this effort include the risks associated with sustaining aging technology platforms with limited and expensive support costs; an aging DCJS work force on the verge of retirement who carry significant institutional knowledge of these systems; and the need to provide the criminal justice community with new system functionality quickly. This large migration effort is a top priority of DCJS and is one of the vital goals aimed at making New York the safest state in the nation.

Solution

The complex problem described above was assigned to the DCJS Office of Justice Information Services (OJIS) management team to solve. This team utilized an approach based on three dimensions; resources, process, and technology.

Resources: One of the first steps OJIS management took was re-alignment of the organization to a model that facilitated managing existing live systems and large project initiatives concurrently. Previously, the OJIS organization consisted of one unit that was responsible for application support as well new application development. Although this was an effective model for DCJS in the past, it proved difficult to manage resources with the new influx of project demand. When production support issues arose, the same resources working on projects also worked on the support issues. Since a good portion of these issues took significant time to remedy, project schedules suffered. To make matters worse, since the projects were so tightly dependent, delays caused ripple effects. To remedy this situation, it was clear that independent focus on project and support work was needed. Consequently, OJIS split the aforementioned monolithic unit into an application support unit and a system transformation unit. The main focus of the system transformation unit was execution of the new projects including the migration effort.

Within the systems transformation unit, the Enterprise Architecture Office (EAO) was created and the responsibilities of the Program Management Office (PMO) were significantly expanded. These groups were tasked with providing the essential governance and process needed to ensure project success.

Process: The processes used to develop systems, commonly known as the system development lifecycle (SDLC) have matured over time. Understanding this, the EAO and PMO jointly initiated an effort to define a new lifecycle that would effectively address the challenges OJIS faced in regards to system support, an aging workforce, and nimbleness to provide new solution requests. Consequently, the team defined the following key governing principles for the "to be" lifecycle:

• Clear definition of organizational and project roles and responsibilities.
• Tracking and managing project interdependencies.
• Project documentation that would easily transition to support organizations and new staff.
• Componentized documentation of the system that would separate the business requirements, technical design, and functional testing of the system; thus allowing multiple role types (i.e. Business Analysts, Developers, and support staff) to consume knowledge in smaller specific areas of the system.
• Traceability between the different system documentation types to ensure complete test coverage as well as future supportability and extensibility of the system.
• Small iterative releases of the system aimed at reducing risk and receiving optimal business user feedback and involvement.

As a result, the team composed a modern iterative agile SDLC which incorporated concepts and methods promoted in the industry standard Rational Unified Process (RUP), the industry renowned Agile methodology, and the NYS Office for Technology SDLC framework. Some of the critical deliverables employed to realize the governing principles included:

• Fine grain documented roles and responsibilities at the organization and project level defining accountability.
• RUP based Software Architecture documents used at the beginning of projects to identify high level technical implementation that in turn influenced project iterations and resourcing strategy.
• Detailed iterative project plans that integrate into program interdependency plans.
• RUP based Use Case documents that captured the business requirements of the system and provided traceability to the design documentation and functional test cases.
• Universal Modeling Language (UML) design specifications.
• RUP based functional test plans, scripts, and results.

Governance for the SDLC was achieved by realigning training and project execution. The training program included partnering with IBM to build and execute a custom curriculum with the OJIS SDLC at its core. Advanced in-house training was then provided by the PMO and EAO through lectures, classroom, and one-on-one sessions. Project execution was monitored and controlled by shorter more frequent interaction with management through phase gate approvals at key milestones such as scope, architecture definition, and detailed project planning. Also paramount to governance were the controls and measures put in place for critical project interdependencies. Master program plans were created through meeting interactions and standard project reporting required by all project managers.

Throughout the process, feedback was constantly sought informally and formally through "lesson's learned" sessions. Standard templates from the PMO (Project Schedules, Scope, Status Updates, Business Case, etc.) and the EAO (Architecture Standards, Design Standards, Code Standards, Performance Testing Standards, etc.) were constantly updated and communicated as a result of feedback.

Technology: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) was chosen as the underlying technical architecture basis for the legacy migration projects. SOA is a widely accepted, modern day approach, for system architecture. SOA's expose discrete business processes as software services which can then be choreographed and reused; a great fit for the highly dependant and complex nature of the DCJS business. Technology was integrated within the SDLC itself where appropriate to make the process more efficient, effective, and easier to manage. Commercial and open source software packages were used to manage requirements, design, coding, functional test, and performance test.

Solution Summary

When OJIS management was faced with the time critical challenges of their legacy migration projects, they needed to act swiftly and effectively to determine an innovative solution to their problems. By understanding their specific challenges they were able to apply the right mix of resources, process and technology and pave a path for success. Today, many of the migration projects have successfully deployed project iterations on time and on budget. System documentation has been created in a manner that aligns with the roles needed to maintain and extend the system without relying on individual institutional knowledge. In addition, senior management acknowledges more accurate insight into schedule and budget of projects.

As an added benefit, the framework implemented has also been leveraged by all new DCJS projects. These projects have also experienced benefits. In addition, DCJS has shared the framework and accompanying standards with the other criminal justice agencies participating in the Integrated Justice Advisory Board (IJAB).

DCJS still has a good deal of work left to complete all of the migration projects. OJIS management will continue applying continuous improvement and innovating new ways to improve management of resources, process and technologies as they continue their journey.

Contacts:

Beth Bloodgood, PMP

NYS DCJS

Program Management Office

4 Tower Place

Albany, NY 12203

(518) 485-9284

beth.bloodgood@dcjs.state.ny.us

 

Chantal Morawski

NYS DCJS

Chief, IJ-OJIS Enterprise Architecture

4 Tower Place

Albany, NY 12203

(518) 457-7812

chantal.morawski@dcjs.state.ny.us