MIDAS Schedule

The MIDAS schedule from the MIDAS newsletter:

"We will deploy MIDAS in two phases nationwide. Each deployment is currently scheduled to include the following components:

Release 1.0	Release 1.1
Acreage Reporting with GIS	Marketing Assistance Loans
Farm Records	SCIMS within SAP
Common Processes	Supporting Master Data
Supporting Master Data

As we developed the deployment strategy for MIDAS, we accounted for the business cycles of farmers and our FSA county offices. We also considered the peak in Acreage Reporting during June and July, as well as final program payments in November. Milestones on the way to these releases are Realization-Build, Testing and Final Preparation with a target go-live of early 2013 for Release 1.0 followed by Release 1.1 in spring 2013.

Training will take place this fall, close to MIDAS go-live so people can absorb and apply their learning right away. Training sessions will honor different learning styles and be delivered in new ways; this may include online Web-based sessions via a “train the trainers” approach. Both training and testing will be based on business scenarios provided by end users."

Not sure what everything means("common processes", "SCIMS within SAP") but that's fine.  The big problem I have is one I've mentioned before: the possibility that deployment of MIDAS and implementation of the next farm bill will overlap and compete. We'll see--IF, and it's a big "if", the project can meet their schedule they'll do better than we did in 1985.  If they don't meet their schedule....