Background
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages onshore federal and Indian trust oil, gas, and geothermal activities and has responsibilities for environmental stewardship. BLM uses three primary systems to manage these activities:
- The Automated Fluid Minerals Support System (AFMSS) is an internal DOI/BLM system (available to DOI/BLM users) used to track and analyze oil and gas operations.
- The Geothermal Resources Automated Support System (GRASS) was adapted from AFMSS to track and analyze geothermal operations.
- The Well Information System (WIS) is used by operators from oil and gas companies (who are external to DOI/BLM) to submit Notices of Staking (NOS), Applications for Permit to Drill (APD), Well Completion Reports, and Sundry Notices
Challenge(s)
There challenges surrounding this project involved four specific areas of concern: 1) the requirements environment was very fluid, 2) the development environment did not allow for scaling and concurrent development, 3) training and production environments needed to be created, and 4) the requirements gathering process was stalled.
Solution
NexGen implemented as close to a SCRUM development process as possible to allow for rapid refocusing of resources. Since the development environment did not allow for scaling and concurrent development, NexGen rectified this by refactoring the codebase and the policies and procedures for maintenance and deployment.
The NexGen project team worked extensively with operations and engineering to get the training and production environments procured, configured, exposed externally, and properly protected.
NexGen was able to provide active facilitation of the requirements gathering process. Our team helped BLM adopt a protocol for requirements definition that included wire frames and mock ups to increase the velocity of the requirements creation phase.
Outcome
"Your team has helped with a high volume of complicated work, maintained high quality and this effort has been sustained throughout the project."
— Michael D. Nedd, Assistant Director
BLM Energy, Minerals, and Realty Management
Consistent, on-time delivery of application updates and the team’s willingness to go the extra mile to improve velocity of development and requirement delivery has earned us multiple acclimations from our customer. To quote the project BLM PM/COR “I know it has been difficult, stressful and exhausting, but all of your hard work is paying off! I am thankful to all of you and proud of the work you’re doing. Thank you, thank you, and thank you!”