We’ve come a long way since our last update on the TechShare.Court project. But first, a little recap.
Background In 2012, Dallas, Tarrant and Travis counties initiated a TechShare project to acquire and build a court system using a collaborative approach proven successful with the Juvenile Case Management System (JCMS). As part of this effort we contracted with AMCAD, a vendor that had a court case management system that was already operational in some Texas courts and was under contract in other Texas counties to provide a “platform” for development.
In June 2014, AMCAD withdrew from the national justice product market. Following the announcement, TechShare and the three participating counties agreed on a plan for moving forward. The plan consists of two releases to complete the development of the functionality needed to run the system in a Texas criminal court.
Once complete, the TechShare.Court system will provide all counties and cities in Texas with a county government choice in selecting a court case management system.
Over the last several months, the TechShare team has continued making progress in areas of development, training, and software shaping. As part of the transition plan, the TechShare team focused on aligning the project with the software development methodology utilized by our other projects, including TechShare.Juvenile and TechShare.Prosecutor. This development approach embraces agile development with a focus on direct and constant feedback from the application users. With this approach in mind the team introduced the following events into the project plan.
TechShare.Court Core Proficiency (TCCP) Training Sessions These training sessions are designed to familiarize users with the TechShare.Court software. It is a streamlined version of the software’s certification class that’s delivered during implementation, excluding exercises and exams. The team has facilitated a number of sessions throughout the counties as well as onsite at the Development Center in Austin, TX.
Software Shaping Sessions Software shaping provides an early opportunity for County Product Owners and their representatives to view feature developments and provide feedback. This feedback is referred to as “shaping” because it occurs early enough in the process to allow for changes to be made to the software while in development, a critical time for user feedback in the software development cycle.
Software Shaping occurs after a set of functionality has been built by the development team and tested internally by the Urban Counties QA team and deemed viable for Software Shaping.
Release One: development completed As of Feb. 3, Release One development is complete, and the team is preparing for User Acceptance Testing (UAT). The first release includes functionality for Dallas County to begin a pilot in two of their courts.
User Acceptance Testing As part of the software development process, the participating counties review and approve each feature requirement that was agreed upon, to ensure it meets the agreed upon definition.
Continuous Software Shaping and Core Proficiency Training Building upon the success of the events held during Release One development, the team will continue to work closely with all the stakeholders to provide constant interaction and feedback as the software is developed. This includes the Core Proficiency Training classes as well as the Software Shaping sessions as previously mentioned.
Release Two: development begins Feb. 24 The current project addendum includes a plan to complete all development work by December 2015. The second release includes the remaining functionality in scope for the project. Moving forward the focus for the development project team is to complete the development as needed and agreed upon by the participating counties for criminal courts in Texas.
For more information about TechShare.Court, contact Resource Manager James Hurley at
james.hurley@cuc.org.