Client background
Allscripts provides software, services, and connectivity solutions for healthcare. More than 160,000 physicians, 800 hospitals, and thousands of other providers use them, including clinics, post-acute care facilities, and homecare agencies. They use them to connect and automate their clinical and business operations.
Business challenge
Allscripts and SoftServe worked together to design a homecare system. It improves clinical quality of care and operational control for large, integrated homecare organizations and small agencies alike. SoftServe also maintained Allscripts Homecare release by release throughout the project.
Early releases followed a Waterfall model. As the product grew more complex, a more flexible approach became critical, and both teams agreed to move to Agile. The goals were to:
- Align development with customer needs and company goals
- Get immediate feedback from the product owner and end users on newly built features
- Bring business analysts, developers, test engineers, and technical writers into close collaboration
- Show progress continuously, so there are no surprises
- Deliver high-quality software
Activities and solution
The SCRUM teams met regularly with a Product Owner, who was central to the project’s success. The Product Owner:
- Defined and prioritized user stories
- Set the Product Backlog content for each release date
- Adjusted features and priorities before each sprint
- Performed acceptance testing on every user story
- Accepted or rejected the results
A Client Focus Group helped the Product Owner prioritize user stories. SCRUM Master meetings coordinated priorities across teams and kept change management flexible. Every new project began with a Zero sprint, where the team analyzed, prioritized, and estimated each user story.
Value delivered
Process matters, but people make a project work. Agile gave the integrated teams continuous communication and feedback. Customers and business analysts talked more often, and the development and QA teams no longer carried unnecessary workload. That lowered product development costs.
Allscripts saw faster response to change, shorter time to market, and gains in quality and efficiency.
Moving to an Agile team model from a Waterfall model can be disruptive and somewhat intimidating for team members. With Waterfall, most communication between Allscripts business analysts and SoftServe went through senior-level team members. With Agile, all team members are in regular communication and have a say in how the project moves forward. Agile is all about people and communication. I’m proud that the Allscripts and SoftServe teams adapted so collaboratively and quickly, and used Agile to improve both the quantity and quality of what we deliver to our customers.Director, Product Development, Allscripts
