SysTest Labs is providing Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) services to the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) for the re-procurement of its Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS). The ProviderOne Project began in January 2005 with its MMIS vendor beginning a complete design, development, and implementation (DDI) phase to supplement its base transfer system.

The customizations required to meet Washington-specific Medicaid business rules completed the design phase by May of 2006, at which time Washington State contracted SysTest Labs as its IV&V provider to assess the development and implementation of ProviderOne. The IV&V contract provides for quarterly cyclical assessments of the DDI Vendor’s performance and progress. Depending on the point at which the IV&V assessment takes place, the project activities are prioritized and SysTest Labs presents a plan for assessing the key areas of ProviderOne that are most visible or highest risk at the time.

The ProviderOne project is set to go live at the beginning of 2010 and SysTest Labs continues its IV&V support through Phase 2 of the project. For each IV&V quarterly assessment, SysTest Labs assesses the primary activities, below, and prepares a formal report with recommendations:

• Project Organization. Assess any planning, resourcing or scheduling issues that may have long term impacts
• Training. Verify that all training is given on-time and is evaluated and monitored for effectiveness
• Configuration Management. Determine the impacts of the storage and management of multiple versions of code and documentation
• Requirements Management. Verify that detailed design and test documentation remains traced to requirements throughout the implementation
• Operating Environment. Ensure that system hardware and software are compatible with State existing environments
• Development Environment. Discover processes used across multiple working groups within the DDI Vendor organization and ensure tool configuration is adequate
• Software Development. Assess practices and communications in place within the development process; review written and working procedures and adherence to them
• Data Management. Evaluate new and existing database designs to determine if they meet existing and proposed system requirements
• Test. Verify that the appropriate level of test coverage is achieved by the test process, that test results are verified, that the correct code configuration has been tested
• Operations Oversight. Evaluate System Impact on Program Goals & Performance Standards