dashboard was done. Between the SISO review and the ECPR meeting, no revision is done unless the SISO meeting and the ECPR meeting occurs in different months (figure 5.2).
With regard to project Beta, the process seemed to be almost identical. I observed that the IV&V and dashboard was created on the date that it was due and a copy was sent to the project manager. I was informed by Lee that he usually got the IV&V dashboard and if there were no issues, he would copy it and forward it to the SISO personnel. However, the dashboards submitted to the process were not identical and often showed variation in the colors. Interviewee Dolores indicated that the project dashboard was usually sent over a day or two late.
In both of those projects, there was a notable drive to not be too “out of sync” with the IV&V person on the project:
You try not to be too out of sync because then you go in and it's like, "Why is there the difference"? Either IV&V is not talking to the agency and explaining and recommending in all of that to the agency or the agency has a reason for them not accepting it, but IV&V still feels strongly about it. Hopefully, you don't have that type of an issue. (IV&V Interviewee Delores, IV&V Projects
Alpha and Gamma)
The development of the “dashboard” document was definitely perceived as a secondary activity. The project managers of Alpha and Beta indicated that they had other status reporting mechanisms that they used and that the dashboards were constructed from those. Additionally, I observed that the dashboard documents were developed at the last minute before the due dates and were often delivered slightly late (less than 24 hours). In project Gamma, the process was different. At the time that this project was running (2004-2006), there was no separate review by the SISO staff (Interviewees Isabella, SISO Critical Panel Member and Sherman, SISO ECPR Facilitator) and the
Commissioner was not required to attend the ECPR meetings and in fact her attendance was spotty (Interviewee Sherman, SISO ECPR Facilitator). There were project team meetings similar to those in projects Alpha and Beta. IV&V attended all project
management meetings. There was a “big meeting” with a large number of people and a smaller meeting with just the PMs and IV&V. Following those, the project management subcontractor created a dashboard document and sent it to an agency manager who used it created an agency version of the dashboard (Interviewees Braxton, Contractor Project Manager, and Jackson, Project Gamma Technical Project Manager). IV&V created a version and this version and the project version were reviewed in a meeting with the IV&V vendor, Agency policy manager, Project Manager and Executive Project Director (Interviewees Jackson, Project Gamma Technical Project Manager, Dolores, IV&V Project Gamma, and Joaquin, IV&V Project Gamma). After this meeting
adjustments were made in the documents as agreed in the meeting and the Executive Project Director would update the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner by himself (Interviewees Forrest, EPD Project Gamma, Dolores, IV&V Projects Alpha and Gamma, and Joaquin, IV&V Project Gamma).
During the development timeframe, serious problems became known with the functionality of the software provided by the software contractor as well as with their performance to schedule (Interviewees Braxton, Contractor Project Manager, and Jackson, Project Gamma Technical Project Manager). Apparently, the schedule
performance of the subcontractor was discussed in the project team meetings and was picked up by the IV&V but the functionality issues were not. These issues were
discussed during at least one juncture with the Agency project management including the option to stop the project, but no change in direction was made (Interviewee Braxton, Contractor Project Manager).
The reporting process used in project Gamma is shown in figure 5.3.
As a last note on the status reporting, a desire on the part of the Project Directors to control the message about the status of the project was observed. At the end of our observation period, SISO introduced a one-page status document to be provided to the ECPR members to reduce the level of effort required ECPR members to gain an understanding of the status. SISO proposed to generate this document based on the dashboard documents provided by the projects. Robert, EPD Project Alpha, expressed a desire to create the document himself as opposed to reviewing the document generated by SISO so that he could ensure that the message he wanted to send was conveyed. Similarly, Forrest attempted to control all the messages going out of the Gamma project. He was the only team member to communicate to the Commissioner and her deputy. Likewise, he controlled the conversation at the ECPR meetings (Interviewee Jackson, Project Gamma Technical Project Manager).
5.4.3 A History of the Projects
During the timeframe of the study, project Alpha began and project Beta terminated. project Gamma had terminated its first phase and was preparing for its second phase.