Category: Practice
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Doing the Same Thing for a Different Result?
EPA recently completed an Alternative Analysis for the modernization of SDWIS. Is this something new or is EPA doing the same thing and expecting a different result?
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Customer Disservice
In this article, I describe an agile approach to developing customer service processes.
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Building Tomorrow’s System to Meet Yesterday’s Problems
Since 2009, EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (OGWDW) has been trying to replace its aging and technologically obsolete SDWIS State system. Originally designed in the mid-1990s and based on a data model going back to the 1980s, the majority of the States, Territories, and EPA Regions use SDWIS State to help manage their drinking water programs. To avoid a fifth incarnation, OGWDW needs to ensure the new system meets today’s needs.
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Moonshot Projects
Apollo was the original moonshot project. Most of us will never work on a real moonshot project. But sometimes we can turn a project into a moonshot if we’re not careful.
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The Problematic PMO
It’s tough to recognize a problem project if the experts charged with preventing problem projects are the cause of them. How do you know if you have a problematic PMO?
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Analysis Paralysis Disorder
There’s analysis paralysis, and then there’s analysis paralysis disorder – the fear of doing too much analysis that it affects the outcome of a project.
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Vendor “Shoot-out”
Are you considering the purchase of an off the shelf business system? This article describes the Software Capabilities Demonstration and how you can use it to help select the system that works best for your users.
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Some Inconvenient Truths About SDWIS
A recent Association for State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) report commented on the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS). This article addresses inaccuracies about SDWIS in the report that may affect user expectations.
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Ethical Basis of Good Design Practice
Building a trustworthy system that effectively protects the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of its data to meet information security requirements is mainly the purview of the developers. However, stakeholders (especially Subject Matter Experts, or “SMEs”) have an ethical responsibility as well. It’s quite possible for the SMEs to affect trustworthiness by placing constraints on the user experience ( UX) design contrary to good design practice. These constraints can adversely affect system integrity, degrading system trustworthiness. Furthermore, the rationale driving the constraint may be unethical from a business (and not technical) perspective.
Practical IT Projects 