By Amy Allison, MIDAS Program Manager
The MIDAS Project is accelerating through Realization and the project team continues to drive forward toward Go-Live. As the MIDAS program manager, my responsibility is to ensure the successful delivery of the future system. In doing so, I strive to reinforce the importance of cost, schedule and performance to all project team members. To ensure a timely and effective delivery of MIDAS, my priorities revolve around staying within budget, ensuring the project remains on schedule, and building a final product that is sustainable and the best possible option for our farmers, ranchers and employees.
Looking back over the past few months, the project has achieved numerous accomplishments. MIDAS is introducing several best practices within FSA that may be modeled for future programs. One example is the gate reviews, or meetings, where the project takes a pause to review overall project health. The goal of these reviews is to ensure that MIDAS is spending its budget wisely and continues to meet business requirements. The gate review is a Pass/Fail event based upon the final vote of an overseeing board, and MIDAS has successfully passed the two gate reviews that have occurred to date: the Solution Requirements Review in December 2011 and the Critical Design Review in March 2011. MIDAS continues to leverage best practices and introduce new ways of conducting business to guarantee the solution meets the needs of Farm Programs’ business.
As the team prepares to deliver MIDAS, assistance from the field will become critical to the success of the project. Currently, the team is finalizing the testing and training plans and soon will reach out to the field through DAFO to identify resources to support these plans. Testing will begin in June and will be the first opportunity to see the new system and run test scripts. This will allow the project to gain feedback on progress and identify any defects within the system.
Prerequisite training may begin as early as July and will be the first chance for the field to solidify their understanding of the functionality being delivered. It also will enable a broader comprehension of inputs and outputs to the new system as part of the end-to-end process.
In the meantime, there are several things all employees can do to help engage and prepare for MIDAS. It is important to ensure all SCIMS, Farm Records, and Acreage Reporting data are accurate by cleaning any duplicates, ensuring consistency in the use of capital letters, and checking addresses for accuracy. In addition, the field can stay informed by reaching out to their state Change Agents. The project is reaching exciting milestones and, for the first time, the field will see the shift from the program view to the process view that has been discussed in forums such as CAN meetings, NASCOE, and SED meetings.
The project team, including myself, greatly appreciates the support received thus far and we look forward to further strengthening our partnership with the field.
Amy Allison serves as the MIDAS Program Manager, FSA
