Essay Health Smart Case Study – Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task

You are required to develop a project evaluation report based on the HealthSMART case study provided on Canvas. Your project evaluation report will answer specific questions which are provided with the case study. The project evaluation report is an opportunity for you to demonstrate what you have learned during the semester about project management.

You should present your answer to each question logically and use references from academic journals and books to substantiate key points. Some of the answers are matters of opinion and you will need to study the literature for ways to approach them. To support your answer, you can refer to project management books, PMBOK, peer reviewed journal articles and authenticated sources

Several issues were evident in the HealthSMART program:

1. Program planning relating to the delivery schedule was poor with overly optimistic milestone delivery dates estimated requiring significant revision (VAGO 2008, p.2). The original target completion date was June 2009 but the program was incomplete at the time of the 2013 audit (VAGO 2008, p.2; VAGO 2013).

2. Poor financial estimation and monitoring processes resulted in unreliable costings for the program (VAGO 2008, p.3). OHIS had no viable process for cost estimation or monitoring of agency spending and they couldn’t estimate the total cost of system ownership (purchase and maintenance) (VAGO 2008, p.3). The Department of Health couldn’t accurately advise how much they had paid the vendor for the Clinical ICT system nor could they track health services payments to the vendor (VAGO 2013, p.15).

3. There was no business case for the program. The viability of the program was not established via a clear cost/benefit analysis (VAGO 2008, p.5). The auditor posited that this led to health agency difficulties in securing funding, delays and technical issues (VAGO 2008, p.5).

4. Governance bodies and processes were in place but issues still arose. At the time of the 2008 audit only one gateway review had been completed in 5 years despite Gateway Review Process (phase gate) participation being a funding requirement (VAGO 2008, pp.7-8). At this time the procurement process was complete and systems implementation was underway. A program review and two gateway reviews were completed after the 2008 audit but recommendations were not actioned (VAGO 2013, p. 20).

5. A transition and contingency plan was developed and implemented by OHIS to manage change but it charged health agencies with the bulk of communication responsibilities. The 2008 audit found that there were differences in the quality of communications across sites about changes to HealthSMART (VAGO 2008, pp.50).