More About SMEs

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have always been the backbone of ZIMS. Now that we have re-launched ZIMS with a new vendor ISIS communications guy Jaime Meyer gathered questions about SMEs to ask ZIMS Chief Architect, Doug Verduzco. Doug was heavily involved in ZIMS at the very beginning, and returned to the project about one year ago as it was heading into the transition between vendors and development processes. Doug has been integral to the design of the new “agile” development process under which ZIMS will be completed.

Jaime: Why have SMEs (pronounced "SMEE") been so directly involved in the design of ZIMS?

Doug: SMEs represent the end-user community of ZIMS. They are the best judge to determine if and how ZIMS can automate and improve what they do, day-to-day. If we didn’t have SMEs actively and directly involved, the effectiveness of ZIMS to solve their problems would be left up to chance, at best. Without direct SME involvement, developers would need to work from documents, illustrations, etc. The zoological world is highly complex, and it often does not follow “common sense” rules. Having direct SME involvement is the best way to transition zoological knowledge to developers and catch errors in judgment before they start.

Jaime: Can you describe the new Development Methodology with which SMEs will be working?

Doug: To be successful, it is more effective to break a large task down into small ones. The same is true with software. The overall ZIMS software was broken down into releases that more or less equate to Animal Management (Release 1), Animal Healthcare (Release 2), Population Management (Release 3), and Advanced Features (Release 4). Each release will subsequently be broken down into “sprints,” which are short, high-intensity development efforts to create a subset of the release’s functionality. Release 1 which began on October 13th, is divided into seven sprints.

Jaime: Why do SME’s need to go to India for extended periods?

Doug: ISIS has two great strengths and they feed each other. One is the fact that it’s a membership organization—a global community of colleagues. ISIS is in service to the community and it serves by making unique business software available for far below the fees that a for-profit software company would charge. The community responds in kind by providing expertise to ISIS. Throughout ZIMS development, SMEs have volunteered expertise which has helped keep the cost of ZIMS far lower than an application this size and complexity would normally be. ISIS has significantly expanded its internal technical team to do much of the work on ZIMS. But ISIS could never afford to hire the sheer number of programmers ZIMS needs to complete. The Indian market for programmers delivers highly-skilled resources at approximately one-fifth the cost of a comparable US-based resource. Therefore, using “off-shore” developers from India is a perfect fit for the ZIMS Project. It’s really the only way possible.

However, one of the most crucial components to the agile development methodology is having SMEs and developers working hand-in-hand. This is impossible to get around, especially with a unique application like ZIMS. So someone will have to travel – either the entire fifteen-person team in India comes here, or two or three SMEs go there. The math tells us that the SME’s will be the ones traveling. This assumes that the SMEs and their organizations are willing to make that commitment, and thankfully both are willing to do so.

Jaime: ISIS recently announced the current group of SMEs. Why were these people chosen?

Doug: It takes an incredible amount of time to train IT people to think like zoological people and vice versa. That is probably the largest difficulty we faced in Alpha ZIMS and it translated into a wide variety of day-to-day challenges. Each member of the current SME team has an expertise in certain kinds of functionality ZIMS needs. Most of them spent a great deal of time on the Alpha project, so they know what worked well, what did not, where the trouble areas are, and they are well aware of all the work done by the community that forms the center of ZIMS functionality. This SME team brings a balance of zoo and aquarium knowledge, Alpha ZIMS experience and optimism and dedication to helping the ZIMS vision succeed. And each of them has an adventurous spirit which is really a crucial skill for the ZIMS project.