Tooling Strategy and Process Revision

Project Insight # 801 Project Description: Revise existing Tooling Work Group Processes to include coordination with other Work Groups and to specify criteria for tooling project selection and prioritization.

Project Need: The HL7 Board has emphasized that the Tooling Work Group needs to focus on tools that make implementing HL7 standards easier as well as those needed to develop and publish HL7 standards. Since tools now often have a web presentation, the Electronic Services Work Group needs to be consulted, as well as Publishing to ensure tools remain coherent and to coordinate resources and schedules.

Return to Tooling Work Group

• Co sponsored by Electronic Services WG and Publishing Work Group

Project Information

Project Insight # 801 Description: Revise existing Tooling Work Group Processes to include coordination with other Work Groups and to specify criteria for Tooling Project Selection and Prioritization.

• Initially titled 'Process alignment for ES and Tooling', with description "Tooling will work with Electronic Services to align the requirements gathering and tool selection processes to ensure resources are available to develop or enhance requests for tools that come to either group that may impact the other group."
• Project facilitator: Jane Curry

Project Resources

• Jane Curry, facilitator
• Lynn Laakso, staff support
• Dennis Cheung, support
• other volunteers please self-identify

Meeting Information

• Project meeting schedule as part of regular Tooling WG conference call

Standing Conference Calls

The Tooling WG will hold a Conference Call at 2 PM Eastern time, each Thursday except during scheduled face-to-face Working Group Meetings unless otherwise noted at Telecon_Agendas.

Conference Call: Uses HL7 Conference Call Service

Dial 770-657-9270 and enter pass code 586935#

GoToMeeting at 482-299-629

Status

Strategy statement:
It is HL7’s intent to create and maintain a comprehensive set of superior tools for every recognized step of the development, balloting, publishing and USE of its products according to the requirements of the HL7 Board, membership and user’s needs.

• Tooling strategy from 2012Sept WGM

HL7’s Tooling Strategy should:

Clearly describe the basic set of governance and availability requirements for any tooling used to produce HL7 published Standards Specifications;

• Provide clarity to work groups concerning their options and obligations when choosing tools that will be required for a Standards Specification / methodology;
• Provide some certainty at a corporate level concerning what funding is required, and how this will impact on the membership costs;
• Provide a foundation for raising money from potential sponsors and making it easier to work with our tooling partners.

Tooling Strategy document sections and assignments

• Tooling Governance:
  1. Tooling Governance Groups
  2. Tooling Risk Assessment
     • Risk assessment should involve cost/benefit analysis before undertaking projects if tooling is a mitigating strategy
     • Need state transitions for decisions and recommendations. Criteria for weighing cost/benefit need to include all types of costs and all types of benefits. (Jane/Michael)
  3. Candidate Metrics
     • descriptions
     • cost formula
     • Tie benefits to Strategic Initiatives
• Tooling Management
  1. Identify management groups, potentially along product lines or platforms
  2. Identify Candidate Management process
  3. Identify product line management practices for tooling coordinators
     • Requires us to identify existing tools and understand the tools well enough to promote them and their fit in our continuum of tool use
     • MWB and Trifolia are HL7-specific tools
     • Consider tools not HL7-specific like Sparx EA, MS Visio
• Tooling methodology
  • Proposed RFP Release and Selection Process from 2012-06-21_Tooling_Call, see Tooling Project Selection and Prioritization.
  • Requirements, Configuration, and Release Management document needs updating.

• Additional elements of the Tooling Strategy as originally defined:
  • defining coordination with other Work Groups
    • establishing Tooling Liaisons to other Work Groups,
    • regular reporting from Liaisons
    • setting expectations for active participation in Tooling work group
      • Formalize processes that increase non-tool developers’ active participation in tooling projects (e.g. acceptance testing)

Project Documents

• Tooling strategy proposed slide deck
• GForge issues tracker for Tooling
• Initial work at HL7_-_Tooling_&_Electronic_Services_alignment