This session will cover key issues, strategies, and methods for addressing risks and achieving success while managing a large-scale federal Drupal project in a decentralized organization. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS or “the Service”), a federal bureau within the Department of the Interior (DOI), consists of more than 20 major program areas across nine geographical regions encompassing all fifty states as well as U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico and Guam. The Service employs approximately 9,000 people throughout hundreds of regional and field facilities. The current FWS internet site architecture reflects the decentralized structure of the Service, as the site is created and maintained by designers and content authors distributed across hundreds of offices throughout the country.
Our first objective in mitigating risk was to leverage a user-centered design approach to uncover the needs of citizens who use the web to interact with FWS while looking for key content and/or services that the agency provides. It was also important to understand the needs of internal stakeholders and operational staff both from an administrative and operational standpoint. Through our discovery phase, we determined that an emphasis on addressing internal stakeholder requirements and organizational goals would become the critical success factor in driving a citizen-centric solution.
Throughout the lifespan of the project, the leadership team has navigated a diverse set of contracting, budget, leadership and operational challenges while defining a centralized and holistic approach to systems design in a decentralized environment. Through our partnership with FWS leadership, we have generated a success-model to overcome these challenges while maintaining the integrity of the project objectives, solution requirements, and enhancing organizational efficiency. Ultimately the greatest project management success will be measured by the Service’s ability to capitalize on the utilization of Drupal and the next generation FWS.gov as a business tool for key transactional workflows as well as a centralized data and content repository for the Service.
The presentation will focus on the following points:
-
Defining scope and project focus - How to discover needs and identify internal and external pain points
-
Contracting limitations/restrictions - successfully working within available contracting options
-
Budgetary issues - creating a centralized funding source
-
An ecosystem of related projects and initiatives - managing communication pathways and identifying other initiatives in the organization that will either hinder or enable success
-
Managing stakeholders in a decentralized environment - Setting up and managing leadership teams in a decentralized organization
-
Handing over the reigns - How structured internal FWS teams support the project
-
How we structured projects to address goals - the extensible Drupal framework, along with a well-organized backlog structured for future solicitations can drive long-term sustainability for digital services
NOTE: This presentation will be co-presented by Limina and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service