On Thu, 2003-02-06 at 07:40, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Tim:
>
> 2 questions:
>
> <<Let's see: if one per cent of the US$1.8 billion budget were allocated
> to an independent risk management strategy involving a FOSS approach -
> that's US$18 million. That's more than enough to complete the design,
> build and testing of OpenEHR, construct all sorts of interfaces and
> front-ends for it, and probably develop a large number of archetypes,
> all on very acceptable timeframes. >>
>
> Question 1:
> <<an independent risk management strategy involving a FOSS approach ->>
>
> If you use a FOSS approach as an independent risk management strategy, then
> doesn't the final product of the FOSS approach have to match the
> functionality set that was planned in the Big IT project to begin with? I
> suppose the risk management strategy here could be to "fall back" to less
> functionality than originally planned in the event of main project failure
> and one has to use the risk mitigation solution since one doesn't expect the
> original project to fail.
The expectation is that the plug is pulled on the mainline solution
before it uses all 99% of the allocated budget. It is very rare for
failure not to manifest itself earlier than that, but it is also very
common for management to fall into the fallacy of sunk costs ("gee, we
spent so much on this project, if we just spend a little bit more
everything will be alright..."). Hence 1% doesn't have to replicate the
total functionality of the mainline project, just provide a starting
point for the fallback position.
>
> Question 2:
>
> If one assumes that the risk management strategy has to deliver some level of
> functionality that was originally planned for then I'm curious as to how you
> think that US$ 18 million is enough to do all of what you list above i.e.,
> complete design, build and test of OpenEHR and construct all sorts of
> interfaces and front-ends for it, including archetype development in an
> acceptable timeframe (assuming as above that it has to deliver a significant
> amount of the planned for functionality)? Do you use a formal estimating
> methodology? or is it just a guess?
No, its just a guess, and 1% of budget is an arbitrary figure. Many
projects allocate much more for risk management, not to mention 10% for
unspecified contingencies. But remember, with a FOSS approach, you are
not starting from scratch. Using OpenEHR, you are leveraging nearly ten
years of thought, careful, principled design and experimentation -
that's something money can't buy (at least not to order in a short
timeframe).
>
> The bottom line for the senior management to buy in to this approach is that
> they can deliver the requisite functionality in the timeframe for a given
> cost and at an acceptable level of quality as measured by software defect
> removal efficiency (or some such metric). All I see above is some wishful
> thinking about how if you only had a small percentage of such a large budget
> you could finish some open source project. To make the business case you
> have to show how it solves their business problem not how it solves your
> problem.
Sure, and the same process of feasibility studies, prototyping etc needs
to happen with the FOSS solution as with the mainline solution. However,
I think a much smaller leap of faith is required on the part of
management when it comes to investing 1% of budget in a FOSS solution
than 99% of budget in a proprietary, traditional solution (given the
well documented history of failures of large health IT projects, and of
large IT projects in general).
But yes, I did qualify my remarks by "In my dreams...". And OpenEHR is
only being used as an example here, since the thread was originally
about an EHR for Kaiser Permanente. Substitute OpenEMed or whatever if
you like.
Tim C
