2009-03-10 EA IP Advisory Group Call Minutes

TSC EA IP Advisory Group

Tuesday, March 210 2009 at 3 PM EST (US EDT, GMT -4)
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Agenda

• Meeting Goal: To assess Alpha Project engagement approach

1. Roll call:
   • Chair: Marc Koehn (Marc.Koehn@GPInformatics.com)
   • Igor Sirkovich (Igor.Sirkovich@Ontario.ca)
   • John S. Carter (jcarter@apelon.com)
   • Ken Rubin (ken.rubin@eds.com)
   • Lloyd McKenzie (lloyd@lmckenzie.com)
   • Lynn Laakso, HQ - scribe (lynn@hl7.org)
   • Nancy Orvis (nancy.orvis@tma.osd.mil)
2. Agenda Review
3. Brief Recap of Group Purpose / Objectives: To advise and assist in the development of deliverables for the HL7 EA-IP Project (Phase 1)
4. Standing Agenda Items
   • Comments re. previous meeting and notes; none noted
   • Update on recent Project Team activities; spoke with ArB last week. Need some clarity on when different versions will come out, when artifacts will come out so we can react to them. Need to bring forward some planning documentation. Need joint work but probably can’t happen until April 15th ArB OOC. There they will produce material we can react to from process perspective.
   • Action item review (if/when applicable)
5. Current Discussion Topics
   • “Brief” Review of HL7 EA-IP Alpha Project Considerations (DRAFT) Please review prior to call and recap of current Project team activities
     • Review Alpha Project Considerations – send Marc email comments or mailto:tsceaip-adv@lists.hl7.org
     • Ken: would expect to see things like exit criteria from project; major milestones, mechanism for tracking and capturing issues;
     • Marc would like to share this draft with ArB, saying this is what we’re working on with another draft coming in two weeks (on next agenda)
   • General Phase 1 timeline and challenges
     • Marc: remind us that the goal is not to do the work but have it listed and sized by Kyoto; build a calendar that forces action from others or wait until after April joint planning but leaves us only 4 weeks to Kyoto…
     • Ken: use the time on the call to brainstorm ideas; in the time between calls it is difficult to do HL7 work.
     • Nancy Orvis joins the call; lessons learned from other orgs building EA. Why is this so hard for HL7? Start with a set of theoretical artifacts while we gather what we do, in fact, have. Agree on using ‘something’ and then pull HL7-specific things in. Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework, DOD EAF, UML, CDDI, Zachman framework. What is the owners’ view, what’s in the data view, what’s in communication view, etc. Process models, activity models, and then what are the artifacts you need.
     • Lynn: John Quinn in the Friday TSC planning call talked about creating an EA straw man from core documents like Core Principles, Localization, HDF documents, HSSP Practical Guide, with maintenance plan, matrix of responsibilities, and relationships of each to the others.
     • Ken: EA is transformational: get to where we want to go. Work has been done, let’s go steal someone’s idea. Driver for EA must be strategic vision, board-level. Corollary is that need business case with EA adoption connecting what we’re trying to do with value for HL7 participant. Organizations will not buy in to new requirements without a business case. Not just about HL7 but about the member organizations. We can help fill that gap.
     • Marc: do we elaborate the new world order before the business case or have a business case to establish the new world order. Ken says start-to-start plus lag.
     • Nancy: isn’t there already enough in the strategic initiative reorganization in the last two years to identify where we’re trying to go?
     • Ken: many of those pieces are there, connecting that into committee work and expectations of volunteers to support new world, we don’t have that. That is the critical path. Needs outreach maybe not so formal as survey. Zachman is too much effort, don’t have the resources. Must have sweet spot between capacity to undertake and need to accomplish.
     • Nancy; document key processes from board, high level activity to get the organization to agree on.
     • Marc; need to document the as-is.
     • Nancy says architecture is a set of models. Don’t have the current models, core processes or core activities.
     • Ken: thinks ORC has some of that before strategic initiative. It’s dated, but has key responsibilities and root-cause challenges.
     • Ken will try to track that down from Hans.
     • Marc leery of taking an off-the-shelf framework and trying to match up artifacts evolving from the SAEAF. Ken warns that if we don’t use an accepted architecture model we will be creating a unique architecture. What’s in the SAEAF is not what we would call an enterprise architecture.
     • key issue: if we see the EA as bigger than what the SAEAF is delivering, are there additional artifacts needed to enable a full EA, or is our mission only just to implement the SAEAF?
     • Example: organizational adoption, within HL7. should be part of an EA plan but not part of the SAEAF.
     • Change management is part of EA.
     • key task; dust off the ORC documents, check to reflect current world.
     • Current development of standards is part MDF, part HDF, not fully documented. Need to articulate expectation of methodology to all the groups. Artifacts developed by the process should be specificed in the SAEAF.
     • Example: extending a DSTU; took four months to determine the process.
     • Nancy: don’t the bylaws already have elements of EA? Mission, goals, activities, key roles, system roles. To model the processes HL7 members have to participate in , in order to develop products – one goal of the SAEAF. Here’s what the current role of chairs, different communities do now. Try a role playing game: welcome to the world of HL7 – which way do you want to go? Are you a subject matter expert, a vendor, etc?
     • MK: if we don’ t have a clear set of rules in the current day, the identifying change is a greater risk.
     • KR:SAEAF hasn’t solved any one’s current problem. It introduces tremendous risk to bring in new requirements on a poorly understood process now.
     • recommendation draft to achieve vision described in saeaf must have documented proven repeatable approach to developing standards. Saeaf must clarify what roles people can play in committees and how they do work; what processes they can participate in, in order to develop standards. Determine new ways to be effective in HL7 because you can see what all the roles are.
     • Take ORCs list, create matrix of processes, how they’re governed, what they’re supposed to be doing. Review list next time: does this list represent world today, is everything covered, do we address the issue adequately, do we understand our baseline together? Matrix of players/groups, from ORC’s documents, how the world works or is supposed to work today. Break processes apart or bring together as need be.
     • Action item; Get ORC information from Hans [Ken R.]
     • Action item: capture list of core business lines and work represented in HL7 (Hans list and elsewhere); [Ken R.]
     • Action item; Review ORC information and determine if a list of key processes can be devised, perhaps in matrix fashion against decision making responsibilities; governing documentation ;etc.[Marc K.]
     • Action item: Once ORC information and business line information has been documented, identify shortest possible list of business traceability requirements to satisfy in EA. Adequately covers the breadth of organization… [Upcoming meeting]
     • Action item: artifacts and models, and requirements
     • Request to define “business lines”: core functions provided by and supported by HL7 – produce ballot, manage ballots, produce standards, provide industry education – maybe fewer than 20 things. Ken will take a cut at it.
     • MK: clarify the things we do versus the how we do them – we manage ballots but in pursuit of publishing a standard. Is it a business line?
     • Ken says “core and supporting business functions” is the label he’s used.
     • call it core business functions
     • activity-based processing, what is its return on investment
     • Nancy: project-based structure already starting to evolve how we do projects and what we produce.
     • Elaborate traceability? Identify functions in org that don’t add value to what you do. Work to shunt those things off. Trace activity in org back to a strategic or other supported objective in the enterprise. Producing ballots example: we do it today because there’s not a better way to do it, but someday there might. Tooling: wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to invest our money into tools but we don’t have available from industry-standard stuff.
     • traceability items may not be right off the bat but should be evaluated near term.
   • Decision framework
     • What are some of the decision points? Roadmap expects set of artifacts from saeaf to go to ballot.
     • Question raised if external commitments made? Not sure of anything formal outside of HL7.
     • Dates: need to talk to Chuck Jaffe, Bob Dolin and Ed Hammond. We need something in certain timeframe or HL7 at risk of them marketplace losing interest. International agendas drive the context for HL7 path and we need to deliver or these agencies may lose interest.
     • Does this lie somewhere between decision framework and communication; need to talk to leadership to find external commitment points. Phase 2 of rollout needs to be anchored to these points.
     • Ken: If we can tie what we’re doing to what’s going on in Health IT, it helps make business case with employer to keep doing HL7 work.
     • JohnC wants something concrete within our group to provide context for our work. Not sure what we’re supposed to do; long term strategy or SAEAF implementation?
     • Lloyd: scope we’re talking about is beyond what I thought we were dealing with. Thought this was how we deal with dynamic model and what artifacts, what process perspective between paradigms. Questions of “what is the organization” and “what is our purpose” were not what I thought we were doing.
     • Marc: Mission is the establishment of changes to the HL7 processes that address some of the goals for which an EA is being devised in the first place (e.g. ensuring that the specifications fr various communicationation paradigms - messaging, documents and services - become better aligned). At the same time, if members can’t concretely figure out how to move existing artifacts (e.g. a CMET) through new processes then we are not successful. Need to be both practical and broad reaching.

Meeting adjourned at 4:25PM EDT