Key Questions

Is the project on track to satisfy the customer's business objectives?Uncertain

Is the project on track to achieve the objectives in the approved timeframe?No

Is the project on track to achieve the objectives within the approved budget?Yes

Project Overall Health

Comments

Yellow

During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s overall health remained yellow based on observations and analysis of the project’s governance, time management, cost/contract, scope, resources, quality, and risk focus areas. Phase 1 OL: The team worked to queue up a request for the Executive Steering Committee (ESC) to incorporate Control Cashiering/Inventory Management (CC/IM) functionality into OL before VR Go-Live to reduce VR risk. Phase 2 VR: The California Department of Technology (CDT) approved Special Project Report (SPR) #2 on January 16, 2026. The document included the Go-Forward plan for VR. In February, this phase of the project fell behind schedule due to resource constraints and the team compressed the schedule. Phase 3 DL: The DMV continued requirements refinement and procurement-related PAL Stage 3 activities.

Focus Area/Rating	Comments
Governance Yellow	During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s Governance Management health is yellow, based on observations and analysis of the project’s governance processes. • Five Project Management Plan (PMP) updates were signed off by DMV leadership. • The DL Request for Proposal (RFP) will not be released in mid-March as planned. • CDT recommends that the DMV prepare the DL pre-solicitation documents and submit to the CDT for approval during the March assessment period. The pre-solicitation process must be complete before requesting Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL) Stage 3 approval. • The CDT continued to recommend that the defect/triage process be documented. • The DMV proactively established freeze periods for systems that impact VR.
Time Management Red	During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s Time/Schedule Management health remained red based on observations and analysis of the Project Schedule Milestones and Deliverables. • Due to delays in awarding resource contracts, the team compressed the schedule; the new version preserves the go-live date of 9/14/26 but increases risk due to Systems Integration Testing (SIT) overlapping User Acceptance Testing (UAT). • The design deadline was February 4, 2026, and that date was moved out to early March due to the volume of defects. • The design deadline has been pushed to 3/6/26, and development has been pushed out a month as well. • Moving the backlog of defects to the development PODs has been slower than planned.
Cost & Contract Management Yellow	During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s Cost & Contract Management health is yellow, based on observations and analysis of the project’s costs and contracts • The DMV awarded all five new VR development contracts; the process took longer than expected. • CDT access to contract management SharePoint was granted, but it is missing contracts and status reports. • The project is currently tracking within approved costs for SPR #2, with no deviations reported.
Scope Management Yellow	During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s Scope Management health is yellow, based on observations and analysis of the project’s scope and related processes. • The OL CC/IM effort is planned to take twelve weeks. Production target is 6/26/26. • Turnaround time for impact analyses remains slower than expected. • There was some confusion on the change request (CR) process during the reporting period. • A CR for Industry Business Center (IBC) Virtual Field Office (VFO) design changes was approved in late January.
Resources Yellow	During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s Resources health is yellow. • Resource onboarding for approximately 120 new consultants was expected in mid-January, and completed in February, delaying the Discovery and Development schedules by about a month. • State resources continue to be constrained for many workstreams. • The team is using a new workbook to manage resource loading. • There are ten vacant project positions.
Quality Yellow	During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s Quality Management health is yellow based on observations and analysis of Quality metrics and performance. • The Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) reports are outdated, incomplete, and inaccurate. DMV has indicated that the draft reports to update the RTM are completed, and the team is working to validate the information and make all updates by the end of March. At the end of the February assessment period, the CDT did not receive the reports. • SIT and UAT plan to use the same test cases. • A draft of the UAT plan and strategy is under review.
Risk And Issues Green	During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s Risk and Issue health is green. • The Risks, Action, Issues, Decisions (RAID) meetings are being held regularly. • The team is aware of the process, and they utilize it as needed. • Mitigation steps are comprehensive and tracked. • CDT’s independent observation of the highest risks impacting the project are: o Workstream scope development delays and scope creep o Resource ramp up o Code quality issues o External dependencies such as business partners o Technical cutover data challenges o Phase 3 DL requirements, schedule, and cost.
Transition Readiness Yellow	During the February 2026 assessment period, the project’s Transition Readiness health is yellow based on observations and analysis of the activities performed and plans for VR cutover. • Planned timelines for conversion cutover remain longer than desired. • Mock 3 is underway with 100% of the bulk load complete. Seeding and data loading are planned to wrap up in March. • Mock 4 started in late February and will be completed at the end of May. This includes loading test data into the End-to-End UAT testing environment. • Knowledge transfer with the former SI was formally completed in late February. • The cutover and rollback approach is under review. The cutover dry run is scheduled to begin in early March.
Conditions For Approval Yellow	The CDT Project Approvals and Oversight (PAO) team observed that the DXP Team previously completed all three approval conditions for DXP Phase 1 – OL. With the SPR #1 approval, two new Conditions for Approval of DXP Phase 2 – VR were required by CDT. Both conditions were met. There are five new conditions associated with SPR #2 approval. None were met in February.
Corrective Action Green	The project has no Corrective Action Plan Items.

• Special Project Report 1 (pdf)
• Stage 4 Project Readiness and Approval Phase 2 (pdf)
• Stage 4 Project Readiness and Approval (pdf)
• Stage 3 Solution Analysis (pdf)
• Stage 3 Solution Analysis (pdf)
• Stage 3 Solution Analysis (pdf)
• Stage 3 Part B Solution Development (pdf)
• Stage 3 Part A Solution Development (pdf)
• Stage 2 Alternative Analysis (pdf)
• Stage 1 Business Analysis (pdf)