integrated project management

Shake it Out – Embracing the Future of Program Management – Part Two: Private Industry Program and Project Management in Aerospace, Space, and Defense

In my previous post, I focused on Program and Project Management in the Public Interest, and the characteristics of its environment, especially from the perspective of the government program and acquisition disciplines. The purpose of this exploration is to lay the groundwork for understanding the future of program management—and the resulting technological and organizational challenges that are required to support that change.

The next part of this exploration is to define the motivations, characteristics, and disciplines of private industry equivalencies. Here there are commonalities, but also significant differences, that relate to the relationship and interplay between public investment, policy and acquisition, and private business interests.

Consistent with our initial focus on public interest project and program management (PPM), the vertical with the greatest relationship to it is found in the very specialized fields of aerospace, space, and defense. I will therefore first begin with this industry vertical.

Private Industry Program and Project Management

Aerospace, Space & Defense (ASD). It is here that we find commercial practice that comes closest to the types of structure, rules, and disciplines found in public interest PPM. As a result, it is also here where we find the most interesting areas of conflict and conciliation between private motivations and public needs and duties. Particularly since most of the business activity in this vertical is generated by and dependent on federal government acquisition strategy and policy.

On the defense side, the antecedent policy documents guiding acquisition and other measures are the National Security Strategy (NSS), which is produced by the President’s staff, the National Defense Strategy (NDS), which further translates and refines the NSS, and the National Military Strategy (NMS), which is delivered to the Secretary of Defense by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the various military services, which is designed to provide unfettered military advise to the Secretary of Defense.

Note that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the related agencies, including the intelligence agencies, operate under a strict chain of command that ensures civilian control under the National Military Establishment. Aside from these structures, the documents and resulting legislation from DoD actions also impact such civilian agencies as the Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), among others.

The countervailing power and checks-and-balances on this Executive Branch power lies with the appropriation and oversight powers of the Congress. Until the various policies are funded and authorized by Congress, the general tenor of military, intelligence, and other operations have tangential, though not insignificant effects, on the private economy. Still, in terms of affecting how programs and projects are monitored, it is within the appropriation and authorization bills that we find the locus of power. As one of my program managers reminded me during my first round through the budget hearing process, “everyone talks, but money walks.”

On the Aerospace side, there are two main markets. One is related to commercial aircraft, parts, and engines sold to the various world airlines. The other is related to government’s role in non-defense research and development, as well as activities related to private-public partnerships, such as those related to space exploration. The individual civilian departments of government also publish their own strategic plans based on their roles, from which acquisition strategy follows. These long terms strategic plans, usually revised at least every five years, are then further refined into strategic implementation plans by various labs and directorates.

The suppliers and developers of the products and services for government, which represents the bulk of ASD, face many of the same challenges delineated in surveying their government counterparts. The difference, of course, is that these are private entities where the obligations and resulting mores are derived from business practice and contractual obligations and specifications.

This is not to imply a lack of commitment or dedication on the part of private entities. But it is an important distinction, particularly since financial incentives and self-interest are paramount considerations. A contract negotiator, for example, in order to be effective, must understand the underlying pressures and relative position of each of the competitors in the market being addressed. This individual should also be familiar with the particular core technical competencies of the competitors as well as their own strategic plans, the financial positions and goals that they share with their shareholders in the case of publicly traded corporations, and whether actual competition exists.

The Structure of the Market. Given the mergers and acquisitions of the last 30 years, along with the consolidation promoted by the Department of Defense as unofficial policy after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the lapse of antitrust enforcement, the portion of ASD and Space that rely on direct government funding, even those that participate in public-private ventures where risk sharing is involved, operate in a monopsony—the condition in which a single buyer—the U.S. government—substantially controls the market as the main purchaser of supplies and services. This monopsony market is then served by a supplier market that is largely an oligopoly—where there are few suppliers and limited competition—and where, in some technical domains, some suppliers exert monopoly power.

Acknowledging this condition informs us regarding the operational motivators of this market segment in relation to culture, practice, and the disciplines and professions employed.

In the first case, given the position of the U.S. government, the normal pressures of market competition and market incentives do not apply to the few competitors participating in the market. As a result, only the main buyer has the power to recreate, in an artificial manner, an environment which replicate the market incentives and penalties normally employed in a normative, highly diverse and competitive market.

Along these lines, for market incentives, the government can, and often does, act as the angel investor, given the rigorous need for R&D in such efforts. It can also lower the barriers to participation in order to encourage more competition and innovation. This can be deployed across the entire range of limited competitors, or it can be expansive in its approach to invite new participants.

Market penalties that are recreated in this environment usually target what economists call “rent-seeking behavior.” This is a situation where there may be incumbents that seek to increase their own wealth without creating new benefits, innovation, or providing additional wealth to society. Lobbying, glad-handing, cronyism, and other methods are employed and, oftentimes, rampant under monosponistic systems. Revolving-door practices, in which the former government official responsible for oversight obtains employment in the same industry and, oftentimes, with the same company, is too often seen in these cases.

Where there are few competitors, market participants will often play follow-the-leader and align themselves to dominate particular segments of the market in appealing to the government or elected representatives for business. This may mean that, in many cases, they team with their ostensible competitors to provide a diverse set of expertise from the various areas of specialty. As with any business, profitability is of paramount importance, for without profit there can be no business operations. It is here: the maximization of profit and shareholder value, that is the locus of power in understanding the motivation of these and most businesses.

This is not a value judgment. As faulty and risky as this system may be, no better business structure has been found to provide value to the public through incentives for productive work, innovation, the satisfaction of demand, and efficiency. The challenge, apart from what political leadership decides to do regarding the rules of the market, is to make those rules that do exist work in the public interest through fair, ethical, and open contracting practices.

To do this successfully requires contracting and negotiating expertise. To many executives and non-contracting personnel, negotiations appear to be a zero-sum game. No doubt, popular culture, mass media and movies, and self-promoting business people help mold this perception. Those from the legal profession, in particular, deal with a negotiation as an extension of the adversarial processes through which they usually operate. This is understandable given their education, and usually disastrous.

As an attorney friend of mine once observed: “My job, if I have done it right, is to ensure that everyone walking out of the room is in some way unhappy. Your job, in contrast, is to ensure that everyone walking out of it is happy.” While a generalization—and told tongue-in-cheek—it highlights the core difference in approach between these competing perspectives.

A good negotiator has learned that, given two motivated sides coming together to form a contract, that there is an area of intersection where both parties will view the deal being struck as meeting their goals, and as such, fair and reasonable. It is the job of the negotiator to find that area of mutual fairness, while also ensuring that the contract is clear and free of ambiguity, and that the structure of the instrument—price and/or cost, delivery, technical specification, statement of work or performance specification, key performance parameters, measures of performance, measures of effectiveness, management, sufficiency of capability (responsibility), and expertise—sets up the parties involved for success. A bad contract can no more be made good than the poorly prepared and compacted soil and foundation of a house be made good after the building goes up.

The purpose of a good contract is to avoid litigation, not to increase the likelihood of it happening. Furthermore, it serves the interests of neither side to obtain a product or service at a price, or under such onerous conditions, where the enterprise fails to survive. Alternatively, it does a supplier little good to obtain a contract that provides the customer with little financial flexibility, that fails to fully deliver on its commitments, that adversely affects its reputation, or that is perceived in a negative light by the public.

Effective negotiators on both sides of the table are aware of these risks and hazards, and so each is responsible for the final result, though often the power dynamic between the parties may be asymmetrical, depending on the specific situation. It is one of the few cases in which parties having both mutual and competing interests are brought together where each side is responsible for ensuring that the other does not hazard their organization. It is in this way that a contract—specifically one that consists of a long-term R&D cost-plus contract—is much like a partnership. Both parties must act in good faith to ensure the success of the project—all other considerations aside—once the contract is signed.

In this way, the manner of negotiating and executing contracts is very much a microcosm of civil society as a whole, for good or for bad, depending on the practices employed.

Given that the structure of aerospace, space, and defense consists of one dominant buyer with few major suppliers, the disciplines required relate to the details of the contract and its resulting requirements that establish the rules of governance.

As I outlined in my previous post, the characteristics of program and project management in the public interest, which are the products of contract management, are focused on successfully developing and obtaining a product to meet particular goals of the public under law, practice, and other delineated specific characteristics.

As a result, the skill-sets that are of paramount importance to business in this market prior to contract award are cost estimating, applied engineering expertise including systems engineering, financial management, contract negotiation, and law. The remainder of disciplines regarding project and program management expertise follow based on what has been established in the contract and the amount of leeway the contracting instrument provides in terms of risk management, cost recovery, and profit maximization, but the main difference is that this approach to the project leans more toward contract management.

Another consideration in which domains are brought to bear relates to position of the business in terms of market share and level of dominance in a particular segment of the market. For example, a company may decide to allow a lower than desired target profit. In the most extreme cases, the company may allow the contract to become a loss leader in order to continue to dominate a core competency or to prevent new entries into that portion of the market.

On the other side of the table, government negotiators are prohibited by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (the FAR) from allowing companies to “buy-in” by proposing an obviously lowball offer, but some do in any event, whether it is due to lack of expertise or bowing to the exigencies of price or cost. This last condition, combined with rent-seeking behavior mentioned earlier, where they occur, will distort and undermine the practices and indicators needed for effective project and program management. In these cases, the dysfunctional result is to create incentives to maximize revenue and scope through change orders, contracting language ambiguity, and price inelasticity. This also creates an environment that is resistant to innovation and rewards inefficiency.

But apart from these exceptions, the contract and its provisions, requirements, and type are what determine the structure of the eventual project or program management team. Unlike the commercial markets in which there are many competitors, the government through negotiation will determine the manner of burdening rate structures and allowable profit or margin. This last figure is determined by the contract type and the perceived risk of the contract goals to the contractor. The higher the risk, the higher the allowed margin or profit. The reverse applies as well.

Given this basis, the interplay between private entities and the public acquisition organizations, including the policy-setting staffs, are also of primary concern. Decision-makers, influences, and subject-matter experts from these entities participate together in what are ostensibly professional organizations, such as the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), the Project Management Institute (PMI), the College of Scheduling (CoS), the College of Performance Management (CPM), the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the National Contract Management Association (NCMA), and the International Cost Estimating and Analysis Association (ICEAA), among the most frequently attended by these groups. Corresponding and associated private and professional groups are the Project Control Academy and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

This list is by no means exhaustive, but from the perspective of suppliers to public agencies, NDIA, PMI, CoS, and CPM are of particular interest because much of the business of influencing policy and the details of its application are accomplished here. In this manner, the interests of the participants from the corporate side of the equation relate to those areas always of concern: business certainty, minimization of oversight, market and government influence. The market for several years now has been reactive, not proactive.

There is no doubt that business organizations from local Chambers of Commerce to specialized trade groups that bring with them the advantages of finding mutual interests and synergy. All also come with the ills and dysfunction, to varying degrees, borne from self-promotion, glad-handing, back-scratching, and ossification.

In groups where there is little appetite to upend the status quo, innovation and change, is viewed with suspicion and as being risky. In such cases the standard reaction is cognitive dissonance. At least until measures can be taken to subsume or control the pace and nature of the change. This is particularly true in the area of project and program management in general and integrated project, program and portfolio management (IPPM), in particular.

Absent the appetite on the part of DoD to replicate market forces that drive the acceptance of innovative IPPM approaches, one large event and various evolutionary aviation and space technology trends have upended the ecosystem of rent-seeking, reaction, and incumbents bent on maintaining the status quo.

The one large event, of course, came about from the changes wrought by the Covid pandemic. The other, evolutionary changes, are a result of the acceleration of software technology in capturing and transforming big(ger) dataset combined with open business intelligence systems that can be flexibly delivered locally and via the Cloud.

I also predict that these changes will make hard-coded, purpose-driven niche applications obsolete within the next five years, as well as those companies that have built their businesses around delivering custom, niche applications, and MS Excel spreadsheets, and those core companies that are comfortable suboptimizing and reacting to delivering the letter, if not the spirit, of good business practice expected under their contracts.

Walking hand-in-hand with these technological and business developments, the business of the aerospace, space and defense market, in general, is facing a window opening for new entries and greater competition borne of emergent engineering and technological exigencies that demand innovation and new approaches to old, persistent problems.

The coronavirus pandemic and new challenges from the realities of global competition, global warming, geopolitical rivalries; aviation, space and atmospheric science; and the revolution in data capture, transformation, and optimization are upending a period of quiescence and retrenchment in the market. These factors are moving the urgency of innovation and change to the left both rapidly and in a disruptive manner that will only accelerate after the immediate pandemic crisis passes.

In my studies of Toynbee and other historians (outside of my day job, I am also credentialed in political science and history, among other disciplines, through both undergraduate and graduate education), I have observed that societies and cultures that do not embrace the future and confront their challenges effectively, and that do not do so in a constructive manner, find themselves overrun by it and them. History is the chronicle of human frailty, tragedy, and failure interspersed by amazing periods of resilience, human flourishing, advancement, and hope.

As it relates to our more prosaic concerns, Deloitte has published an insightful paper on the 2021 industry outlook. Among the identified short-term developments are:

  1. A slow recovery in passenger travel may impact aircraft deliveries and industry revenues in commercial aviation,
  2. The defense sector will remain stable as countries plan to sustain their military capabilities,
  3. Satellite broadband, space exploration and militarization will drive growth,
  4. Industry will shift to transforming supply chains into more resilient and dynamic networks,
  5. Merger and acquisitions are likely to recover in 2021 as a hedge toward ensuring long-term growth and market share.

More importantly, the longer-term changes to the industry are being driven by the following technological and market changes:

  • Advanced aerial mobility (AAM). Both FAA and NASA are making investments in this area, and so the opening exists for new entries into the market, including new entries in the supply chain, that will disrupt the giants (absent a permissive M&A stance under the new Administration in Washington). AAM is the new paradigm to introduce safe, short-distance, daily-commute flying technologies using vertical lift.
  • Hypersonics. Given the touted investment of Russia and China into this technology as a means of leveraging against the power projection of U.S. forces, particularly its Navy and carrier battle groups (aside from the apparent fact that Vladimir Putin, the president of Upper Volta with Missiles and Hackers, really hates Disney World), the DoD is projected to fast-track hypersonic capabilities and countermeasures.
  • Electric propulsion. NASA is investing in cost-sharing capabilities to leverage electric propulsion technologies, looking to benefit from the start-up growth in this sector. This is an exciting development which has the potential to transform the entire industry over the next decade and after.
  • Hydrogen-powered aircraft. OEMs are continuing to pour private investment money into start-ups looking to introduce more fuel-efficient and clean energy alternatives. As with electric propulsion, there are prototypes of these aircraft being produced and as public investments into cost-sharing and market-investment strategies take hold, the U.S., Europe, and Asia are looking at a more diverse and innovative aerospace, space, and defense market.

Given the present condition of the industry, and the emerging technological developments and resulting transformation of flight, propulsion, and fuel sources, the concept and definitions used in project and program management require a revision to meet the exigencies of the new market.

For both industry and government, in order to address these new developments, I believe that a new language is necessary, as well as a complete revision to what is considered to be the acceptable baseline of best business practice and the art of the possible. Only then will organizations and companies be positioned to address the challenges these new forms of investment and partnering systems will raise.

The New Language of Integrated Program, Project, and Portfolio Management (IPPM).

First a digression to the past: while I was on active duty in the Navy, near the end of my career, I was assigned to the staff of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (OUSD(A&T)). Ostensibly, my assignment was to give me a place to transition from the Service. Thus, I followed the senior executive, who was PEO(A) at NAVAIR, to the Pentagon, simultaneously with the transition of NAVAIR to Patuxent River, Maryland. In reality, I had been tasked by the senior executive, Mr. Dan Czelusniak, to explore and achieve three goals:

  1. To develop a common schema by supporting an existing contract for the collection of data from DoD suppliers from cost-plus R&D contracts with the goal in mind of creating a master historical database of contract performance and technological development risk. This schema would first be directed to cost performance, or EVM;
  2. To continue to develop a language, methodology, and standard, first started and funded by NAVAIR, for the integration of systems engineering and technical performance management into the program management business rhythm;
  3. To create and define a definition of Integrated Program Management.

I largely achieved the first two during my relatively brief period there.

The first became known and the Integrated Digital Environment (IDE), which was refined and fully implemented after my departure from the Service. Much of this work is the basis for data capture, transformation, and load (ETL) today. There had already been a good deal of work by private individuals, organizations, and other governments in establishing common schemas, which were first applied to the transportation and shipping industries. But the team of individuals I worked with were able to set the bar for what followed across datasets.

The second was completed and turned over to the Services and federal agencies, many of whom adopted the initial approach, and refined it as well to inform, through the identification of technical risk, cost performance and technical achievement. Much of this knowledge already existed in the Systems Engineering community, but working with INCOSE, a group of like-minded individuals were able to take the work from the proof-of-concept, which was awarded the Acker in Skill in Communication award at the DAU Acquisition Research Symposium, and turn it into the TPM and KPP standard used by organizations today.

The third began with establishing my position, which hadn’t existed until my arrival: Lead Action Officer, Integrated Program Management. Gary Christle, who was the senior executive in charge of the staff, asked me “What is Integrated Program Management?” I responded: “I don’t know, sir, but I intend to find out.” Unfortunately, this is the initiative that has still eluded both industry and government, but not without some advancement.

Note that this position with its charter to define IPM was created over 24 years ago—about the same time it takes, apparently, to produce an operational fighter jet. I note this with no flippancy, for I believe that the connection is more than just coincidental.

When spoken of, IPM and IPPM are oftentimes restricted to the concept of cost (read cost performance or EVM) and schedule integration, with aggregated portfolio organization across a selected number of projects thrown in, in the latter case. That was considered advancement in 1997. But today, we seem to be stuck in time. In light of present technology and capabilities, this is a self-limiting concept.

This concept is technologically supported by a neutral schema that is authored and managed by DoD. While essential to data capture and transformation—and because of this fact—it is currently the target by incumbents as a means of further limiting even this self-limited definition in practice. It is ironic that a technological advance that supports data-driven in lieu of report-driven information integration is being influenced to support the old paradigm.

The motivations are varied: industry suppliers who aim to restrict access to performance data under project and program management, incumbent technology providers who wish to keep the changes in data capture and transformation restricted to their limited capabilities, consulting companies aligned with technology incumbents, and staff augmentation firms dependent on keeping their customers dependent on custom application development and Excel workbooks. All of these forces work through the various professional organizations which work to influence government policy, hoping to establish themselves as the arbiters of the possible and the acceptable.

Note that oftentimes the requirements under project management are often critiqued under the rubric of government regulation. But that is a misnomer: it is an extension of government contract management. Another critique is made from the perspective of overhead costs. But management costs money, and one would not (or at least should not) drive a car or own a house without insurance and a budget for maintenance, much less a multi-year high-cost project involving the public’s money. In addition, as I have written previously which is supported by the literature, data-driven systems actually reduce costs and overhead.

All of these factors contribute to ossification, and impose artificial blinders that, absent reform, will undermine meeting the new paradigms of 21st Century project management, given that the limited concept of IPM was obviously insufficient to address the challenges of the transitional decade that broached the last century.

Embracing the Future in Aerospace, Space, and Defense

As indicated, the aerospace and space science and technology verticals are entering a new and exciting phase of technological innovation resulting from investments in start-ups and R&D, including public-private cost-sharing arrangements.

  1. IPM to Project Life-Cycle Management. Given the baggage that attends the acronym IPM, and the worldwide trend to data-driven decision-making, it is time to adjust the language of project and program management to align to it. In lieu of IPM, I suggest Project Life-Cycle Management to define the approach to project and program data and information management.
  2. Functionality-Driven to Data-Driven Applications. Our software, systems and procedures must be able to support that infrastructure and be similarly in alignment with that manner of thinking. This evolution includes the following attributes:
    • Data Agnosticism. As our decision-making methods expand to include a wider, deeper, and more comprehensive interdisciplinary approach, our underlying systems must be able to access data in this same manner. As such, these systems must be data agnostic.
    • Data neutrality. In order to optimize access to data, the overhead and effort needed to access data must be greatly reduced. Using data science and analysis to restructure pre-conditioned data in order to overcome proprietary lexicons—an approach used for business intelligence systems since the 1980s—provides no added value to either the data or the organization. If data access is ad hoc and customized in every implementation, the value of the effort cannot either persist, nor is the return on investment fully realized. It backs the customer into a corner in terms of flexibility and innovation. Thus, pre-configured data capture, extract, transformation, and load (ETL) into a non-proprietary and objective format, which applies to all data types used in project and program management systems, is essential to providing the basis for a knowledge-based environment that encourages discovery from data. This approach in ETL is enhanced by the utilization of neutral data schemas.
    • Data in Lieu of Reporting and Visualization. No doubt that data must be visualized at some point—preferably after its transformation and load into the database with other, interrelated data elements that illuminate information to enhance the knowledge of the decisionmaker. This implies that systems that rely on physical report formats, charts, and graphs as the goal are not in alignment with the new paradigm. Where Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint are used as a management system, it is the preparer is providing the interpretation, in a manner that predisposes the possible alternatives of interpretation. The goal, instead, is to have data speak for itself. It is the data, transformed into information, interrelated and contextualized to create intelligence that is the goal.
    • All of the Data, All of the Time. The cost of 1TB of data compared to 1MB of data is the marginal cost of the additional electrons to produce it. Our systems must be able to capture all of the data essential to effective decision-making in the periodicity determined by the nature of the data. Thus, our software systems must be able to relate data at all levels and to scale from simplistic datasets to extremely large ones. It should do so in such a way that the option for determining what, among the full menu of data options available, is relevant rests in the consumer of that data.
    • Open Systems. Software solution providers beginning with the introduction of widespread CPU capability have manufactured software to perform particular functions based on particular disciplines and very specific capabilities. As noted earlier, these software applications are functionality-focused and proprietary in structure, method, and data. For data-driven project and program requirements, software systems must be flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of analytical and visualization demands in allowing the data to determine the rules of engagement. This implies systems that are open in two ways: data agnosticism, as already noted, but also open in terms of the user environment.
    • Flexible Application Configuration. Our systems must be able to address the needs of the various disciplines in their details, while also allowing for integration and contextualization of interrelated data across domains. As with Open Systems to data and the user environment, openness through the ability to roll out multiple specialized applications from a common platform places the subject matter expert and program manager in the driver’s seat in terms of data analysis and visualization. An effective open platform also reduces the overhead associated with limited purpose-driven, disconnected and proprietary niche applications.
    • No-Code/Low-Code. Given that data and the consumer will determine both the source and method of delivery, our open systems should provide an environment that supports Agile development and deployment of customization and new requirements.
    • Knowledge-Based Content. Given the extensive amount of experience and education recorded and documented in the literature, our systems must, at the very least, provide a baseline of predictive analytics and visualization methods usually found in the more limited, purpose-built hardcoded applications, if not more expansive. This knowledge-based content, however, must be easily expandable and refinable, given the other attributes of openness, flexibility, and application configuration. In this manner, our 21st century project and program management systems must possess the attributes of a hybrid system: providing the functionality of the traditional niche systems with the flexibility and power of a business intelligence system enhanced by COTS data capture and transformation.
    • Ease of Use. The flexibility and power of these systems must be such that implementation and deployment are rapid, and that new user environment applications can be quickly deployed. Furthermore, the end user should be able to determine the level of complexity or simplicity of the environment to support ease of use.
  1. Focus on the Earliest Indicator. A good deal of effort since the late 1990s has been expended on defining the highest level of summary data that is sufficient to inform earned value, with schedule integration derived from the WBS, oftentimes summarized on a one-to-many basis as well. This perspective is biased toward believing that cost performance is the basis for determining project control and performance. But even when related to cost, the focus is backwards. The project lifecycle in its optimized form exists of the following progression:

    Project Goals and Contract (framing assumptions) –> Systems Engineering, CDRLs, KPPs, MoEs, MoPs, TPMs –> Project Estimate –> Project Plan –> IMS –> Risk and Uncertainty Analysis –> Financial Planning and Execution –> PMB –> EVM

    As I’ve documented in this blog over the years, DoD studies have shown that, while greater detail within the EVM data may not garner greater early warning, proper integration with the schedule at the work package level does. Program variances first appear in the IMS. A good IMS, thus, is key to collecting and acting as the main execution document. This is why many program managers who are largely absent in the last decade or so from the professional organizations listed, tend to assert that EVM is like “looking in the rearview mirror.” It isn’t that it is not essential, but it is true that it is not the earliest indicator of variances from expected baseline project performance.

    Thus, the emphasis going forward under this new paradigm is not to continue the emphasis and a central role for EVM, but a shift to the earliest indicator for each aspect of the program that defines its framing assumptions.
  1. Systems Engineering: It’s not Space Science, it’s Space Engineering, which is harder.
    The focus on start-up financing and developmental cost-sharing shifts the focus to systems engineering configuration control and technical performance indicators. The emphasis on meeting expectations, program goals, and achieving milestones within the cost share make it essential to be able to identify fatal variances, long before conventional cost performance indicators show variances. The concern of the program manager in these cases isn’t so much on the estimate at complete, but whether the industry partner will be able to deploy the technology within the acceptable range of the MoEs, MoPs, TPPs, and KPPs, and not exceed the government’s portion of the cost share. Thus, the incentive is to not only identify variances and unacceptable risk at the earliest indicator, but to do so in terms of whether the end-item technology will be successfully deployed, or whether the government should cut its losses.
  1. Risk and Uncertainty is more than SRA. The late 20th century approach to risk management is to run a simulated Monte Carlo analysis against the schedule, and to identify alternative critical paths and any unacceptable risks within the critical path. This is known as the schedule risk analysis, or SRA. While valuable, the ratio of personnel engaged in risk management is much smaller than the staffs devoted to schedule and cost analysis.

    This is no doubt due to the specialized language and techniques devoted to risk and uncertainty. This segregation of risk from mainstream project and program analysis has severely restricted both the utility and the real-world impact of risk analysis on program management decision-making.

    But risk and uncertainty extend beyond the schedule risk analysis, and their utility in an environment of aggressive investment in new technology, innovation, and new entries to the market will place these assessments at center stage. In reality, our ability to apply risk analysis techniques extends to the project plan, to technical performance indicators, to estimating, to the integrated master schedule (IMS), and to cost, both financial and from an earned value perspective. Combined with the need to identify risk and major variances using the earliest indicator, risk analysis becomes pivotal to mainstream program analysis and decision-making.

Conclusions from Part Two

The ASD industry is most closely aligned with PPM in the public interest. Two overarching trends that are transforming this market that are overcoming the inertia and ossification of PPM thought are the communications and information systems employed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which opened pathways to new ways of thinking about the status quo, and the start-ups and new entries into the ASD market, borne from the investments in new technologies arising from external market, geo-political, space science, global warming, and propulsion trends, as well as new technologies and methods being employed in data and information technology that drive greater efficiency and productivity. These changes have forced a new language and new expectations as to the art of the necessary, as well as the art of the possible, for PPM. This new language includes a transition to the concept of the optimal capture and use of all data across the program management life cycle with greater emphasis on systems engineering, technical performance, and risk.

Having summarized the new program paradigm in Aerospace, Space, and Defense, my next post will assess the characteristics of program management in various commercial industries, the rising trends in these verticals, and what that means for the project and program management discipline.

Shake it Out – Embracing the Future in Program Management – Part One: Program and Project Management in the Public Interest

I heard the song from which I derived the title to this post sung by Florence and the Machine and was inspired to sit down and write about what I see as the future in program management.

Thus, my blogging radio silence has ended as I begin to process and share my observations and essential achievements over the last couple of years.

Some of my reticence in writing has been due to the continual drumbeat of both outrageous and polarizing speech that had dominated our lives for four years. Combined with the resulting societal polarization, I was overwhelmed by the hyper-politicized environment which has fostered disinformation and dysfunction. Those who wish to seek my first and current word on this subject need only visit my blog post, “In Defense of Empiricism” at the AITS Blogging Alliance here.

It is hard to believe that I published that post four years ago. I stand by it today and believe that it remains as valid, if not more so, than it did when I wrote and shared it.

Finally, the last and most important reason for my relative silence has been that I have been hard at work putting my money and reputation where my blogging fingers have been—in the face of a pandemic that has transformed and transfigured our social and economic lives.

My company—the conduit that provides the insights I share here—is SNA Software LLC. We are a small, veteran-owned company and we specialize in data capture, transformation, contextualization and visualization. We do it in a way that removes significant effort in these processes, ensures reliability and trust, to incorporate off-the-shelf functionality that provides insight, and empowers the user by leveraging the power of open systems, especially in program and project management.

Program and Project Management in the Public Interest

There are two aspects to the business world that we inhabit: commercial and government; both, however, usually relate to some aspect of the public interest, which is our forte.

There are also two concepts about this subject to unpack.

The first is distinguishing between program and project management. In this concept, a program is an overarching effort that may consist of individual efforts that, together, will result in the production or completion of a system, whether that is a weapons system, a satellite, a spacecraft, or an engine. It could even be a dam or some other aspect of public works.

A project under this concept is a self-contained effort separated organizationally from the larger entity, which possesses a clearly defined start and finish, a defined and allocated budget, and a set of plans, a performance management feedback system, and overarching goals or “framing assumptions” that define what constitutes the state of being “done.”

Oftentimes the terms “program” and “project” are used interchangeably, but the difference for these types of efforts is important and goes beyond a shallow understanding of the semantics. A program will also consider the lifecycle of the program: the follow-on logistics, the interrelationship of the end item to other components that will constitute the deployed system or systems, and any iterative efforts relating to improvement, revision, and modernization.

A word on the term “portfolio” is also worth a mention in the context of our theme. A portfolio is simply a summary of the projects or programs under an organizational entity that has both reporting and oversight responsibility for them. They may be interrelated or independent in their efforts, but all must report in some way, either due to fiduciary, resource, or oversight concerns, to that overarching entity.

The second concept relates to the term “public interest.” Programs and projects under this concept are those that must address the following characteristics: legality, governance, complexity, integrity, leadership, oversight, and subject matter expertise. I placed these in no particular order.

What we call in modern times “public interest” was originally called “public virtue” by the founders of the United States, which embody the ideals of the American Revolution, and upon which our experiment in democratic republicanism is built. It consists of conducting oneself in a manner in which the good of the whole—the public—outweighs personal interests and pursuits. Self-dealing need not apply.

This is no idealistic form of self-delusion: I understand, as do my colleagues, that we are, at heart, a commercial profit-making enterprise. But the manner in which we engage with government requires a different set of rules and many of these rules are codified in law and ethical practice. While others do not always feel obliged to live by these rules, we govern ourselves and so choose to apply these virtues—and to seek to support and change our system to encourage such behavior to as to be the norm—even in direct interactions with government personnel where we feel these virtues have been violated.

Characteristics of Public Interest Programs

Thus, the characteristics outlined above apply to program and project management in the public interest in the following manner:

Legality: That Public Interest Programs are an artifact of law and statute and are specifically designed to benefit the public as a whole.

At heart, program and project management are based on contractual obligations, whether those instruments apply internally or externally. As a result, everyone involved in the program and project management discipline is, by default, part of the acquisition community and the acquisition process. The law that applies to all government acquisition systems is based on the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). There are also oversight and fiduciary responsibilities that apply as a result of the need for accountability under the Congressional appropriations process as well as ethical standards that apply, such as those under the Truth in Negotiations Act (TINA). While broad in the management flexibility they allow, violations of these statutes come with serious consequences. Thus, as a basis for establishing hard and fast guardrails in the management of programs and projects. Individual government agencies and military services also publish additional standards that supplement the legal requirements. An example is the Department of Defense FAR Supplement (DFARS). Commercial entities that hold government contracts in relation to Program Management Offices (PMOs) must sign on to both FAR and agency contractual clauses, which will then flow down to their subcontractors. Thus, the enforcement of these norms is both structured and consistent.

Governance: That the Organizational Structure and Disciplines deriving from Public Interest Programs are a result of both Contract and Regulatory Practice under the concept of Government Sovereignty.

The government and supplier PMOs are formed as a result of a contractual obligation for a particular purpose. Government contracting is unique since government entities are the sovereign. In the case of the United States, the sovereign is the elected government of the United States, which derives its legitimacy from the people of the United States as a whole. Constitutionally, the Executive Branch is tasked with the acquisition responsibility, but the manner and method of this responsibility is defined by statute.

Thus, during negotiations and unlike in commercial practice, the commercial entity is always the offeror and the United States always the party that either accepts or rejects the offer (the acceptor). This relationship has ramifications in contract enforcement and governance of the effort after award. It also allows the government to dictate the terms of the award through its solicitations. Furthermore, provisions from law establish cases where the burden for performance is on the entity (the supplier) providing the supplies and services.

Thus, the establishment of the PMO and oversight organizations have a legal basis, aside from considerations of best business practice. The details of governance within the bounds of legal guidance are those that apply through agency administrative law and regulation, oftentimes based on best business practice. These detailed practices of governance are usually established as a result of hard-learned experience: establishment of disciplines (systems engineering and technical performance, planning, performance management, cost control, financial execution, schedule, and progress assessment), the periodicity of reporting, the manner of oversight, the manner of liaison between the supplier and government PMOs, and alignment to the organization’s goals.

Complexity: That Public Interest Programs possess a level of both technical and organizational complexity unequaled in the private sector.

Program and project management in government involves a level of complexity rarely found in similar non-governmental commercial efforts. Aligning the contractual requirements, as an example, to an assessment of the future characteristics of a fighter aircraft needed to support the U.S. National Defense Strategy, built on the assessments by the intelligence agencies regarding future threats, is a unique aspect of government acquisition.

Furthermore, while relying on the expertise of private industry of such systems that support national defense, as well as those that support space exploration, energy, and a host of other needs, the items being acquired, which require cost type R&D contracts that involve program management, by definition are those where the necessary solutions are not readily available as commercial end items.

Oftentimes these requirements are built onto and extend existing off-the-shelf capabilities. But given that government investment in R&D represents the majority of this type of spending in the economy, absent it, technology and other efforts directed to meeting defense, economic, societal, climate, and space exploration challenges of the future would most likely not be met—or those that do will benefit only a portion of the populace. The federal government uniquely possesses the legal legitimacy, resources, and expertise to undertake such R&D that, pushing the envelope on capabilities, involves both epistemic and aleatory risk that can be managed through the processes of program management.

Integrity: The conduct of Public Interest Programs demands the highest level of commitment to a culture of accountability, impartiality, ethical conduct, fiduciary responsibility, democratic virtues, and honesty.

The first level of accountability resides in the conduct of the program manager, who is the locus of integrity within the program management office. This requires a focus on the duties the position demands as a representative of the Government of the United States. Furthermore, the program manager must ensure that the program team operate within the constraints established by the program’s or project’s contractual commitments, and that it continues to work to meeting the program goals that align with the stated interests and goals of the organization. That these duties are exercised regardless of self-interest is the basis of integrity.

This is not an easy discipline, and individuals oftentimes cannot separate their own interests from those of their duties. Yet, without this level of commitment, the legitimacy of the program office and the governmental enterprise itself is threatened.

In prior years, as an active-duty Supply Corps officer, I came across cases where individuals in civil service or among the commissioned officer community confused their own interests—for promotion, for self-aggrandizement, for ego—with those duties demanded of their rank or position. Such confusions of interests are serious transgressions. With contracted-out positions within program offices adding consulting and staffing firms into the mix, with their oftentimes diversified interests and portfolios, an additional layer of challenges is presented. Self-promotion, competition, and self-dealing have all too often become blatant, and program managers would do well to enforce strict rules regarding such behavior.

The pressures of exigency are oftentimes the main cause of the loss of integrity of the program or project. Personal interrelationships and human resource management issues can also undermine good order and discipline necessary for the program or project to organize itself into a cohesive, working team that is focused on a common vision.

Key elements mentioned in our opening thesis regarding ethical conduct, adherence to democratic virtues which include acceptance of all members of the team regardless of color, ethnicity, race, sexual identity, religion, or place of national origin. People deserve the respect and decency deriving from their basic human rights to enjoy human dignity, as well as of their position. Adding to these elements include honesty and the willingness to accept and report bad news, which is essential to integrity.

An organization committed to the principle of accountability will seek to measure and ensure that the goals of the program or project are being met, and that ameliorative measures are taken to correct any deficiencies. Since these efforts oftentimes involve years of effort involving significant sums of public monies, fiduciary integrity is essential to this characteristic.

All of these elements can and should exist in private, commercial practices. The difference that makes this a unique characteristic to program management in the public interest is the level of scrutiny, reporting, and review that is conducted: from oversight agencies within the Executive Department of the government, to the Congressional oversight, hearing and review processes, agency review, auditing and reporting, and inquires and critiques by the press and the public. Public interest program management is life in a fishbowl, except in the most secret efforts, and even those will eventually be subject to scrutiny.

As with a U.S. Navy ship that makes a port of call in a foreign country, the actions of the conduct of crew will not only reflect on themselves or their ship, but on the United States; so it is also with our program offices. Thus, systems of programmatic governance and business management must anticipate in their structure the level of adherence required. Given the inherent level of risk involved in these efforts, and given the normal amount of error human systems create even with good intentions and expertise, establishing a system committed to the elements of integrity creates a self-correcting one better prepared to meet the program’s or project’s challenges.

Leadership: Programs in the Public Interest differ from equivalent commercial efforts in that management systems and incentives based on profit- and shareholder-orientations do not exist. Instead, a special kind of skillset is required that includes good business management principles and skills combined with highly developed leadership traits.

Management skills tend to be a subset of leadership, though in business schools and professional courses they tend to be addressed as co-equal. This is understandable in commercial enterprises that focus on the capitalistic pressures regarding profit and market share.

Given the unique pressures imposed by the elements of integrity, the program manager and the program team are thrown into a situation that requires a focus on the achievement of organizational goals. In the case of program and project management, this will be expressed in the form of a set of “framing assumptions” that roll into an overarching vision.

A program office, of course, is more than a set of systems, practices, and processes. It is, first and foremost, a collection of individuals consisting of subject matter experts and professionals who must be developed into a team committed to the vision. The effort to achieve this team commitment is one of the more emotional and compelling elements that comprise leadership.

Human systems are adaptive ones, complex, which react and are created by both incentives and sanctions. Every group, especially involving creative and talented people, starts out being a collection of individuals with the interrelations among the members in an immature state. Underlying the expression of various forms of ambition and self-identification among mature individuals is the basic human need for social acceptance, born from the individual personal need for love. This motivation exists psychologically in all individuals except for sociopaths. It is also the basis for empathy and the acceptance of the autonomy of others, which form the foundation for team building.

The goal of the leader is to encourage maturity among the members of the group. The result is to create that overused term “synergy.” This is accomplished by doing those things as a leader necessary to develop members of the group that fosters trust, acceptance, and mutual respect. Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr., in his missive on Naval Leadership, instructed his young officers to eschew any concept of perfectionism in people. People make mistakes. We know this if we are to be brutally honest about our own experiences and actions.

Thus, intellectual honesty and an understanding on what motivates people within their cultural mores, above all else, is essential to good leadership. Americans, by nature, tend to be skeptical and independently minded. They require a level of explanation and due diligence that is necessary to win over their commitment to a goal or vision. When it comes to professionals operating within public service in government—who take an oath to the Constitution and our system of laws—the ability to lead tends to be more essential than just good management skills, though the latter are by no means unimportant. Management in private enterprise assumes a contentious workplace of competing values and interests, and oftentimes fosters it.

Program and project management in the public interest cannot succeed in such an environment. It requires a level of commitment to the goals of the effort regardless of personal values or interests among the individual members of the team. That they must be convinced to this level of commitment ensures that the values of leadership not only operate at the top of the management chain, but also at each of the levels and lateral relationships that comprise the team.

The shorthand for leadership in this culture is that the leader is “working their way out of their job,” and “that in order to be a good leader one must be a good follower,” meaning that all members of the team are well-informed, that their contributions, expertise and knowledge is acknowledged and respected, that individual points of failure through the irreplaceable person syndrome are minimized, and that each member of a team or sub-team can step in or step up to keep the operation functioning. The motivating concept in these situations are the interests of the United States, in lieu of a set of stockholders or some fiduciary reward.

Finally, there is the concept of the burden of leadership. Responsibility can be can be delegated, but accountability cannot. Leadership in this context entails an obligation to take responsibility for both the mission of the organization and the ethical atmosphere established in its governance.

Oversight: While the necessity for integrity anticipates the level of accountability, scrutiny, oversight, and reporting for Programs in the Public Interest, the environment this encompasses is unique compared to commercial entities.

The basis for acquisition at the federal level resides in the Article Two powers of the president as the nation’s Chief Executive. Congress, however, under its Article One powers, controls appropriations and passes laws related to the processes, procedures and management of the Executive Branch.

Flowing from these authorities, the agencies within the federal government have created offices for the oversight of the public’s money, the methods of acquisition of supplies and services, and the management of contracts. Contracting Officers are given authority through a warrant to exercise their acquisition authority under the guidance and management of a senior acquisition authority.

Unlike in private business, the government operates under the concept of Actual Authority. That is, no one may commit the government except those possessing a warrant. Program Managers are appointed to provide control and administration of cost type efforts, especially those containing R&D, to shepherd these efforts over the course of what usually constitutes a multi-year effort. The Contracting Officer and/or the senior acquisition authority in these cases will delegate contract administration authority to the Program Manager. As such, it is a very powerful position.

The inherent powers of the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branches of government create a tension that is resolved through a separation of powers and the ability of one branch to—at least in most cases—check the excesses and abuses of the other: the concept of checks and balances, especially through the operation of oversight.

When these tensions cannot be resolved within the processes established for separation of powers, the third branch of government becomes involved: this is the Judicial Branch. The federal judiciary has the ability to review all laws of the United States, their constitutionality, and their adherence to the letter of the law in the case of statute.

Wherever power exists within the federal government there exists systems of checks and balances. The reason for this is clear, and Lord Acton’s warning about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely is the operational concept.

Congress passes statutes and the Judiciary interprets the law, but it is up to the Executive Branch through the appointed heads of the various departments of government down through the civil service and, in the case of the Department of Defense, the military chain of command under civilian authority, to carry out the day-to-day activities in executing the laws and business of the government. This creates a large base of administrative law and procedure.

Administrative Law and the resulting procedures in their implementation come about due to the complexities in the statutes themselves, the tests of certain provisions of the statutes in the interplay between the various branches of government, and the practicalities of execution. This body of law and procedure is oftentimes confused with “regulation” in political discussions, but it is actually the means of ensuring that the laws are faithfully executed without undue political influence. It is usually supplemented by ethical codes and regulations as well.

As a part of this ecosystem, the Program in the Public Interest must establish a discipline related to self-regulation, due diligence, good business practice, fiduciary control, ethical and professional conduct, responsibility, and accountability. Just as the branches of the federal government are constructed to ensure oversight and checks-and-balances, this also exists with normative public administration within the Executive Branch agencies.

This is often referred to both positively and, mostly among political polemicists in the negative, as the bureaucracy. The development of bureaucracies in government is noted by historians and political scientists as an indication of political stability, maturity, and expertise. Without bureaucracies, governments tend to be capricious and their policies uncertain. The practice of stare decisis—the importance of precedent in legal decisions—is also part and parcel of stability. Government power can be beneficial or coercive. Resting action on laws and not the whims or desires of the individual person is essential to the good order and discipline of the federal government.

As such, program and project managers, given the extensive latitude and inherent powers of their position, are subject to rigorous reporting, oversight, and accountability regimes in the performance of their duties. In R&D cost-type program and project management efforts, the risk is shared between the supplier and the government. And the government flows down this same regime to the contractor to ensure the integrity of the effort in the expenditure of public monies and under the performance and delivery of public contacts.

This leads us to the last important aspect of oversight: public scrutiny, which also includes the press as the Fourth Estate. When I was a young Lieutenant in the Navy working in contracts the senior officer to whom I was assign often remarked: “Never do anything that would cause you to be ashamed were it to end up being read by your grandmother in the Washington Post.”

Unlike private business where law, contractual obligation, and fiduciary responsibility are the main pressures on tolerated behavior, the government and its actions are—and must be—under constant public scrutiny. It is expected. Senior managers who champ against the bit of this check on official conduct misunderstand their role. Even the appearance of malfeasance or abuse can cause one to steer into the rocks and shoals.

Subject Matter Expertise: Given the interrelated characteristics of legality, governance, complexity, integrity, leadership, and oversight—linked to the development of a professional, permanent bureaucracy acting through a non-partisan civil service—the practices necessary to successfully shepherd such efforts has produced areas of expertise and specialization. These areas provide a basis for leveraging technology in gaining insight into meeting all of the requirements necessary to the good administration and control of Program Management in the Public Interest.

The structures and practices of program and project management are reflected in the private economy. Some of this is contractually prescribed and some of it is based on best business practice learned through hard experience. In the interplay of government and industry, most often an innovation in one has been refined and improved in the other, only to find its way back to practice on the originating “side” of the transaction.

Initially in our history this cross-fertilization occurred through extraordinary wartime measures: standardization of rifled weaponry passed down by Thomas Jefferson and Eli Whitney, and for railroad track gauge standards issued by the Union government during the Civil War, are just two examples that turned out to provide a decisive advantage against laissez faire and libertarian approaches.

As the complexity of private business concerns, particularly in the international sphere, began to mimic—and in many cases surpass—the size and technical complexity of many individual government efforts, partnerships with civil authorities and private businesses saw the need for industry standardization for both electrical and non-electrical components and processes. The former was particularly important in the “Current Wars” between Edison and Westinghouse.

These simple and earlier examples highlight the great conundrum of standardization of supply, practice and procedure in acquisition: the need for economy through competition of many sources for any particular commodity or item weighed against the efficiency and interoperability needed to continue operations. Buying multiple individual items with the same function but produced using differing standards creates a nightmare of suboptimization. Overly restrictive standards can and have had the effect of reducing competition and stifling innovation, especially if the standard is proprietary.

In standards setting there are several interests involved that must be taken into account: the technical expertise (technical, qualitative, etc.) that underlies the standard, the public interest in ensuring a healthy marketplace that rewards innovation, diversity, and price competitiveness, the need for business-to-business cooperation and synergy in the marketplace, and the preponderance of practice, among others. In the Defense industry this also includes national security concerns.

This last consideration provides an additional level of tension between private industry and government interests. In the competition for market share and market niches, businesses are playing a zero-sum game that shifts between allies and competitors. Still, the interest of individual actors is focused on making a proprietary product or service dominant in the target market.

Government, on the other hand, particularly one that operates as a republic based on democratic processes and virtues and a commitment to equal rights, has a different set of interests that are, in many cases, diametrically opposed to those of individual players in the marketplace. Government needs and desires a broad choice of sources for what it needs, while ensuring that qualitative standards are met under a fair and reasonable price. When it does find innovation, it seeks to reward it, but only for the limited terms, conditions, and period of the contractual instrument.

The greater the risk in these cases—especially when cost risk is shared—the greater the need for standards, especially qualitative ones. The longer the term of the effort, the greater the need for checks and balances through evaluation, review, and oversight. The greater the dollar value, the greater importance for fiduciary and contractual accountability.

Thus, subject matter expertise has evolved over time, aligned with the functions and end items being developed and delivered. These areas include:

Estimating – A critical part of program and project management, this is a discipline with highly specialized quantitative methods for estimating and projecting project costs, resources, and duration. It is part of the planning phase prior to program or project inception. It can be used to support budget planning prior to program approval, during negotiations and, after award, to inform the project plan.

Systems Engineering – as described by the International Council of Systems Engineering, “a transdisciplinary and integrative approach to enable the successful realization, use, and retirement of engineered systems, using systems principles and concepts, and scientific, technological, and management methods.”

As it relates to program and project management, the technical documents related to providing the basis and structure of the lifecycle management of the end item application, including the application of technical standards, measures of effectiveness, measures of performance, key performance parameters, and technical performance measures. In simplistic terms, systems engineering defines when the item under R&D reaches the state of “done.”

Financial Management – at the program and project management level, the planning, organizing, directing and controlling the financial activities such as procurement and utilization of funds to adhere to the limitations of law and consistent with the terms and conditions of the contract and the its ancillary planning and execution documents.

At its core, financial management within this discipline includes the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process for the financial requirements of successful program execution. As with any individual enterprise, cashflow for required activities with the right type of money determined by Congressional appropriation presents a unique and specialized skillset under program management in the public interest. Oftentimes the lack of funds necessary to address a particular programmatic risk or challenge can be just as decisive to program execution and success as any technical challenge.

Risk and Uncertainty – the concept of risk and uncertainty have evolved over time. Under classical economics (both Keynes and Knight), risk is where all of the future events and consequences of an action are known, but where specific outcomes are unknown. As such, probability calculus is applied to determine the risk management: mitigation and handling. Uncertainty, under this definition, is unknowable events that will result from our actions and is implicit in human action. There is no probability calculus or risk buy-down that can address areas of uncertainty. These definitions are also accepted under the concept of complexity economics.

My good colleague Glen Alleman (2013) at his blog, Herding Cats, casts risk as a product of uncertainty. This is a reordering of definitions, but not unuseful. Under Glen’s approach, uncertainty is broken into aleatory and epistemic uncertainty. The first—aleatory—comes from a random process, what Keynes, Knight, et al. would define as classical uncertainty. The second—epistemic—comes from lack of knowledge. The first is irreducible, which is consistent with classical economics and complexity economics; the second is subject to probability analysis and risk handling methodologies.

Both risk and uncertainty—aleatory and epistemic—occur within all phases and under each discipline within the project management environment. Any human action involves these forces of cause-and-effect and uncertainty—and limit our actions under the concept of “free will.”

Planning and Scheduling – usually these have been viewed as separate entities, but they are, in fact, part of a continuum, as are all of the disciplines mentioned, but more on that later in these blogs.

Planning involves the ability to derive the products of both the contract terms and conditions, and the systems engineering process. The purpose is to develop a high-level, time-phased plan that captures program events, deliverables, requirements, significant accomplishment criteria, and basic technical performance management achievement that will be the basis for a more detailed integrated master schedule.

The scheduling discipline is tasked with further delineating the summary tasks into schedule activities based on critical path methodology. A common refrain when I worked on the government side of program management was that you cannot eat an elephant in one gulp: you have to eat it one piece at a time.

As it relates to this portion of project methodology, I have, over the years, heard people say that planning and scheduling is more of an art instead of a science. Yet, the artifacts upon which our planning documents rest exist as part of the acquisition process and our systems and procedures are mature and largely standardized. The methods of systems engineering are precise and consistent.

The lexicon of planning and scheduling, regardless of the software applications or manual methods used, describe the same phenomenon and concepts, despite slightly different—and oftentimes proprietary—terminology. The concept of critical path analysis is well documented in the literature with slight, though largely insignificant, differences in application.

What appears as art is, in reality, a process that involves a great deal of complexity because these are the documents upon which all of the moving parts of the program are documented. Rather than art, it is a discipline that requires attention to detail and collaboration, aside from the power of computing.

Resource Management – as with planning and scheduling, resource management consists of a detailed accounting of the people, equipment, monies, and suppliers that are required to achieve the activities detailed in the program schedule.

In the detailed and specialized planning of projects and programs in the public interest, these efforts are cross-referenced and further delineated to the actual work that needs to be completed. A Work Breakdown Structure (or WBS), is the method of time-phasing the work using detailed tasks that integrate scope, cost, and schedule at the lowest level of achievement.

Baselining and Performance Management – are essential for project control in this environment. In this case, project and program schedule, cost, and resources are (ideally) risk adjusted and a performance management baseline is established: the basis for the assessment and control of the project.

This leads us to the methodology that is always on the cusp of being the Ozymandias of program management: earned value management or EVM. The discipline of EVM arose out of the Space Age era of the 1960s. The premise is simple: when undertaking any complex effort there is a finite amount of money and resources, and a target date for the needed end item. We need a method to determine whether the actual work performed in terms of budgeted resources and time is tracking to the plan to produce the desired end item application.

When looking at the utility of EVM, one must ask: while each of the disciplines noted above also track achievement over the lifecycle of the project or program, do any combine an analysis against budgeted time and resources? The answer is no, and so EVM is essential to management of these efforts.

Still, our other disciplines also track important information that is not captured by EVM. Thus, the entire corpus of our disciplines represents the project and program ecosystem. These processes, procedures, and the measures derived from them are interconnected. It is this salient fact that points us in the direction regarding the future of program management.

Conclusions from Part One

Given that we have outlined the unique and distinctive characteristics of public interest program management, the environment and basis upon which such program management rests, and the highly developed disciplines that have evolved as a result of the experience in system development, deployment, and lifecycle management, our inquiry must next explore the evolutionary nature of the program organization itself. Once identified and delineated, we must then determine the place of program organization within the context of developments in systems and information theory which will give us insight into the future of program management.

Innervisions: The Connection Between Data and Organizational Vision

During my day job I provide a number of fairly large customers with support to determine their needs for software that meets the criteria from my last post. That is, I provide software that takes an open data systems approach to data transformation and integration. My team and I deliver this capability with an open user interface based on Windows and .NET components augmented by time-phased and data management functionality that puts SMEs back in the driver’s seat of what they need in terms of analysis and data visualization. In virtually all cases our technology obviates the need for the extensive, time consuming, and costly services of a data scientist or software developer.

Over the course of my career both as a consumer and a provider of technology solutions, I have seen an evolution in software that began with simple point solutions being developed to automate particular manual processes, to more sophisticated solutions that are designed to automate a complex function. In most of these cases, a customer has identified a gap or deficiency in their requirements that represents an inefficiency or sub-optimization of their processes and then seek a software “tool” to acquire in order to address that specific purpose. The application of these “tools” combine to meet the overall vision of the organization or sub-system within the organization.

What Do You Do With A Problem Like “Tools”

The capabilities of software in terms of data handling capabilities and functionality double every 12-18 months in today’s environment. The use of the term “tools” for software, which is really based on a pre-2000 concept, is that in the mind’s eye software is analogous to any other tool. In the literature, particularly in that authored by consultants, this analogy is oftentimes extended to common household or construction tools: a wrench, a screwdriver, or a power drill. Under this concept each tool has a specific purpose and it is up to the SME to determine which tool is best for a specific job.

The problem with this concept is that not only is it obsolete, but it does great harm financially to the organization in terms of overhead costs, organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

First of all, most physical tools are fairly static in their specific use. A hammer is still a hammer, even if some sort of power is extended to give it power. It’s purpose remains to use force to insert a connective fastener, like a nail, into a medium, like a piece of wood. A nail gun, for instance, is a type of hammer. It is more powerful and efficient but, still, it is a glorified hammer. It is a superior tool in construction because it is more efficient, provides a consistency in quality, and is faster. It also eliminates the factors of arm strength, physical coordination, and visual alignment skills of the user; as anyone who has experienced a sore thumb as a result of a misaligned strike can attest. But a nail gun is still restricted to its specific function–sinking nails for the purpose of fastening.

Software, as it has evolved, was similarly based on the concept of a tool. The physical functions of a specific vocation were the first to undergo digitization: accountants and business operations personnel had spreadsheet software applications, secretarial and clerical staffs (yes, they used to exist) had word processing software, marketing and middle management could relay their ideas with presentation software, and the list went on.

As the power of software improved it followed the functions of traditional line-and-staff organizations. Many of these were built to replace the physical calculation of formulae and concepts that required a slide rule and, later, a scientific calculator. Soon scheduling software replaced manual GANTT planning, earned value software automated the calculation of basic EVM analytics, and risk software allowed for the complex formulation involved in assessing risk for the branch of a plan using simulated Monte Carlo analysis.

Each of these software applications targeted a specific occupation, and incorporated specific knowledge (functionality) required of that occupation.

Organizational software for multiple functions usually consisted of a suite of tools under the rubric of an ERP or Business Intelligence System. Modules and “bolt-ons” consisted of tying together business processes and point software requirements augmented by large software consulting staffs to customize the solutions. In actual practice, however, these were software tools tied together though a common brand and operating environment. Oftentimes the individual bolt-ons and tools weren’t even authored by the same development team with a common vision in mind, but a reaction to market forces that required a gap be filled through acquisition of a company or intellectual property.

Needless to say, these “enterprise” solutions aren’t that at all. Instead, they are a business-driven means to penetrate a vertical by providing scattershot functionality. Once inside a company or organization the other bolt-ons and modules are marketed in order to take over other business processes. Integration is achieved across domains through data transfer or other interpretive methods.

This approach has been successful, as it has been since the halcyon days when IBM dominated the computing market, especially among the larger software firms. It also meets many of the emotional and psychic needs of many senior managers. After all, the software firm–given its economic size–feels solid. The numbers of specialists introduced into the organization to augment staff provide a feeling of safety and accomplishment. C-level management and stockholders feel that risk is handled given that their software needs are being met at some level.

What this approach did not, and does not, meet is genuine data integration, especially given the realization that the data we have been using has been inadequate and artificially restricted based on what software providers were convincing their customers was the art of the possible. The term “Big Data” began to be introduced into the lexicon, and with it the economic realization that capturing and integrating datasets that were previously “impossible” to capture and integrate was (and presently is) an economic imperative.

But the approach of incumbents, whose priority is to remain “sticky” and to defend territory against new technologies, was to respond: “we have a tool for that.” Thus, the result has been the further introduction of inefficient individual applications with their inability to fully exploit data. Among these tools are largely “dumb”–that is, viewing data flat–data visualization tools that essentially paint pretty pictures from Excel or, when they need to be applied on a larger scale, default to the old business intelligence brute force approach of applying labor to derive the importance in data. Old habits are hard to change and what one person has done another can do. But this is the economic equivalent of what is called rent-seeking behavior. That is, it is inefficient and exploitative.

After all, if you buy what was advertised as a sports car you expect to see an engine under the hood and a transmission connected to a drivetrain and a pretty powerful one at that. What one does not expect is to buy the car but have to design and build the features of these essential systems while a team of individuals are paid by the hour to push us to where we want to go. Yet, organizations (and especially consultants) seem to be happy with this model when it comes to information management.

Thus, when a technology company like mine comes across a request for proposal, an informal invitation to participate in market research, or in exploratory professional meetings (largely virtual as of this writing), the emphasis and terminology is on software “tools”, which limits the ability of consumers to exploit technology because it mentally paints a picture that limits the definition of what software should do and can do.

This mindset, however, is beginning to change and, no doubt, our current predicament under the Coronavirus crisis will accelerate that transition.

To take our analogy one step further, we are long past the time when we must buy each component of an automobile individually and then assemble it in our own garage. Point solutions, which are set and inelastic, are like individual parts of the car.

Enterprise solutions consisting of different modules and datasets, oftentimes constructed from incompatible foundations, exacerbate this situation and add the element of labor to a supposedly automated process, like buying OEM products and having to upgrade the automobile we supposed bought to do its job, but still needed (with the help of a mechanic) to perform the normal functions of steering, stopping, and accelerating.

Open systems solutions provide more flexibility, but they can be both a blessing and a curse. The challenge is to provide the right balance of out-of-the-box point solution-type functionality while still providing enough flexibility for adaptability. Taking a common data approach is key to achieving this balance. This will require the abandonment of the concept of software “tools” and shifting the focus on data.

Data and Information Take Over: Two Models

The economic imperative for data integration and optimization developed from the needs of the organization and its practitioners–whether it be managers, analysts, or auditors working in a company, a business unit, a governmental agency, or a program or project organization–is to be positioned facing forward.

In order to face forward one must first establish a knowledge-based organization or, as oftentimes identified, a data-driven organization. What this means in real terms is that data is captured, processed, and contextualized so that its importance and meaning can be derived in a timely manner so that something can be done about what is happening. During our own present situation this is not just an economic imperative, but for public health an existential one for many of us.

Thus, we are faced with several key dimensions that must be addressed: size, manner of integration, contextualization, timeliness, and target. This applies to both known and unknown datasets.

Our known datasets are those that are already being used and populated in existing systems. We know, for example, that in program and project management that we require an estimate and plan, a schedule, a manner of organizing and tracking our progress, financial management and material management systems and others. These represent our pool of structured data, and understanding the lexicon of these systems is what is necessary to normalize and rationalize the data through a universal translator.

Our unknown datasets are those that require collection but, when done, is collected and processed in an ad hoc manner. Usually the need for this data collection is learned through the school of hard knocks. In other cases, the information is not collected at all or accidentally, such as when management relies on outside experts and anecdotal information. This is the equivalent of an organizational JOHARI window shown below.

Overview of Johari Window with quadrants
showing the relationships of self-knowledge and understanding

The Johari Window explains our perceptions and our relationship to the outside world. Our universe is not a construction of our own making or imagination. We cannot make our own reality nor are there “alternative facts.” The most colorful example of refuting this specious philosophical mind game is relayed to us in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it — “I refute it thus.”

We can deny what we do not know, or construct magical thinking. but reality is unmoved. In the case of Johnson he kicked the stone and the stone, also unmoved, kicked back in the form of the pain that Johnson felt when he “rebounded from it”.

Nor are the quadrants equal in our perceptual windows. Some people and organizations are very well informed and others less so, but the tension and conflict of our lives–both internally and externally–relates to expanding the “open” and “facade” portions of the Johari window so that we are not only informed of how others register us, but also to uncover the unknown, and to attempt to control how others perceive us in our various roles and guises.

We see this playing out in tracking the current Coronavirus pandemic. The absence of reliable widespread tests and testing infrastructure has impeded an understanding of the virus and the most effective strategies to deploy in dealing with it. Absent data, health and governmental agencies have been left with no choice but to use the same social distancing and travel restrictions deployed during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and then, if lifting some of these, hope for the best.

This is the situation despite the fact that national risk assessments and risk registers, such as the U.S. National Security Council Pandemic Playbook and the U.K. National Risk Register, outlined measures to be taken given certain particular indicators. No doubt there are lessons to be learned here, but at the core lesson is the fact that, absent reliable and timely data that is converted into information that can be used in a decisive and practical manner, an organization, a state, or a nation risks its survival when it fails to imagine what information it needs to collect, absent the prosaic information that comes from performing the day-to-day routine.

Admittedly, there is no great insight here regarding this need (or, at least, there shouldn’t be). This condition is the reason why intelligence systems and agencies were created in the first place. It is why military and health services imagine scenarios and war-game them, and why organizations deploy brain-storming. Individuals and organizations that go into the world uninformed or self-deluded do not last long, and history is replete with such examples. Blanche DuBois relied on the kindness of strangers and we are best served by her experience as an archetype.

And yet, we still find ourselves struggling to properly collect, integrate, and utilize information at the same time that we have come to the realization that we need to collect and process information from larger pools of data. The root cause of this condition, as asserted above, rests in the mental framing of how to approach data and the problem that needs to be solved. It requires us to change the conceptual framework that relies on the concept of “tools.”

We can make this adjustment by realigning the object of the challenge so that it conforms with what we imagine to be the desired end-state. But, still, how do we determine what we need to collect? This is first a question of perception as opposed to one regarding knowledge: what one views as not only necessary but within the realm of possibility.

Once again, this dilemma is best served by models and, in this case, it is not unlike the Overton Window. Those preferring to eschew Wikipedia entries can also find a more detailed and nuanced definition at the source through the Mackinac Center for Public Policy website.

Overton Windows showing degrees of acceptability as modified by Joshua Trevino

Joseph Overton described the window as one of defining acceptable political policies in the mind of the public. He used the terms “more free” and “less free” to describe policies that think tanks recommend to describe the amount of government intervention, avoiding the left-right comparisons used by polemicists. Various adjustments and variations to the basic window have been proposed since his original use of the model, but it has been expanded to describe public perceptions in general on a host of socioeconomic concerns.

As with the Johari Window, I would posit that there is an analogous Overton Window in relation to information that frames what is viewed as the art of the possible. These perceptions influence the actions of decision-makers in assessing the risk involved in buying software solutions. When it comes to the rapidly developing field of data capture, transformation, and effective utilization, the perception from the start suggests some degree of risk and the danger of moving too quickly. For those in the field of data optimization, given that new technology capacity increases exponentially in shorter periods of time, the barrier here is to shift the informational Overton Window so that the market is educated on the risk-reward equation.

A Unified Model for Aligning Our Data

We have discussed two models up to this point in our exploration: an Informational Johari Window and an Informational Overton Window. Each of these models, using a simplified method, isolates different dimensions of the problem of data, which when freed of the concept of “tools” unlocking it, provides us with a clearer picture of the essential nature of its capture and utilization, and to what purposes.

We are now ready to take the next step in defining how to approach data to serve the strategic interests of the enterprise or organization.

For those of us in the information field, especially in the early years when applying solutions to line-and-staff organizations, what we found is that the very introduction of the new technology changed both the structure and nature of the organization. Initially we noted a sophisticated and accelerated version of the Hawthorne Effect. But there was something more elemental and significant going on.

Digital technology is amazingly attuned, especially when properly designed and deployed, to extend the functions of human knowledge gathering and processing. In this way it can be interpreted as an extension of human evolution–of the nature of human society acting as a complex adaptive system. In fact, there are so many connections between early physical, methodological, and industrial societal developments to digitization, such as the connection between the development of the Jacquard Loom to the development of the computer punch card (and there are others) that it seems that human society would have found a way to get to this point regardless of the existence of the intervening human pioneers, though their actual contributions are clear. (For further information on the waves of development see the books Future Shock and The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler.)

When many of us first applied digitized technology to knowledge workers (in my case in the field of contract management) we found that the very introduction of the technology changed perceptions, work habits, and organizational structures in very essential ways. Like the effect of the idea of evolution as described by Daniel Dennett, the application of digital evolution is like a universal acid–it eats through and transforms everything it touches.

For example, a report that, in the past, would have taken a week or two to complete, mostly because of the research required, now took a day or so. Procurement Action Lead Times (PALT) realized significant improvements since information previously only available in paper form was now provided on-line. At the same time, systems were now able to handle greater volumes of demand. As a result, customers’ expectations changed so much that they no longer felt that they had to hold back requests for fear of overloading the system and depend on human intervention. Suppliers, seeing many commodities experiencing steady and stable growth, reverted to just-in-time manufacturing.

Over time, typing pools and secretarial staffs, the former being commonplace well into the 1980s and the latter into the 1990s, except as symbols of privilege or prestige, disappeared. Middle management and many support staffs followed this trend in the early 2000s. Today, consulting services consisting of staffing personnel to apply non-value added manual solutions such as Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides to display data that has already been captured and processed, still manage to hold on in isolated pockets. That this model is not sustainable nor efficient should be obvious except for the continued support these models lend to the self-serving concept of “tools.”

Thus, the next step in the alignment of data capture and utilization to organizational vision is the interplay between our models. Practical experience suggests, though anecdotal, that as forward-facing organizations adopt more powerful digitized technologies designed to capture more and larger datasets, and to better utilize that data, that they tend to move to expand their self-awareness–their Informational Johari Window.

This, in turn, allows them to distinguish between structured and unstructured data and the value–the qualitative information content–of these datasets. This knowledge is then applied to reduce the labor and custom code required for larger data capture and utilization. In the end, these developments then determine what is the art of the possible by moving and expanding the Informational Overton Window.

Combining these concepts from a data perspective results in a combined model as illustrated below from the perspective of the subject:

Data Window of Perception and Possibility (Subject)

Extending this concept to the external subject (object or others) results in the following:

Data Window of Perception and Possibility (Object or Others)

This simplistic model describes several ways of looking at the problem of data and how to align it with its use to serve our purposes. When we gather data from the world the result can be symmetrical or asymmetrical. That is, each of us does not have the capacity to collect the same data that may be relevant to our existence or the survival of our organizations or institutions.

This same concept of symmetry and asymmetry applies to our ability to process data into information and–further–to properly apply information to when it will contribute to a decisive outcome in terms of knowledge, understanding, insight, or action.

As with the psychological Johari Window, our model takes it account the unknown within the much larger data space. Think of our Big Blue Ball (which is not so big) within the context of space. All of space represents the data of the universe. We are finding that the secrets of vast space-time are found in quanta as well in the observations of large and distant celestial events and objects. Data is everywhere. Yet, we can perceive only a small part of the universe. That is why our Data Window does not encompass the entire data space.

The quadrants, of course, are rarely co-equal, but for purposes of simplicity they are shown as such. As with the psychological Johari Window of self-awareness, the tension and conflict within the individual and its relationship with the external world is in the adjustment of the sizes of the quadrants that, hopefully, tend toward more self-awareness and openness. From the perspective of data, the equivalent is toward the expansion of the physical expansion of the Data Window while the quadrants within the window expand to minimize asymmetry of external knowledge and the unknown.

The physical limitations of symmetry, asymmetry, and the unknown portions of the data space is further limited by our perceptions. Our understanding of what is possible, acceptable, sensible, radical, unthinkable, and impossible is influenced by these perceptions. Those areas of information management that fall within some mean or midpoint of the limitations of our perceptions represent current practice and which, as with the original Johari Window, I label as “policy,” though a viable alternative label would be “practice.”

Note that there perceptions vary by the position of the subject. In the case of our own perceptions, as for those reading this post, the first variation of the model is aligned vertically. For the case of the perceptions of others, which are important in understanding their position when advocating a particular course of action, the perception model is aligned horizontally across the quadrants.

The interplay of the quadrants within the Data Window directly affect how we perceive the use of data and its potential. Thus, I have labeled the no-man’s-land portion that pushes into areas that are unknown to the subject and external object is labeled as “The Frontier.”

To an American a “frontier” is an unexplored country while, historically, in the Old World a “frontier” is a border. The former promises not only risk, but, also opportunity and invites exploration. The latter is a limitation. No doubt, my use of the term is culturally biased to the first definition.

Intellectually and physically, as we enter the frontier and learn what secrets await us there, we learn. For data we may first see a Repository of Babel and deal with it as if it were flat. But, given enough exploration we will learn its lexicon and underlying structure and, eventually, learn how to process it into information and harness its content. This, in turn, will influence the size of the Data Window, the relative sizes of the quadrants, and our perceptions of the art of the possible.

Conception to Application

This model, I believe, is a useful antecedent concept in approaching and making comprehensible what is often called Big Data. The model also helps us be more precise in how we perceive and define the term as technology changes, given that exponential increases in hardware storage and processing capabilities expand our Data Window.

Furthermore, understanding the interplay of how wee approach data, and the consequences of our perceptions of it, allow us to weigh the risk when looking at new technologies and the characteristics they need to possess in order to meet organizational goals and vision. The initial bias, as noted by Paul Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, is for people to stick with the status quo or the familiar–the devil they know–in lieu of something new and innovative, even when the advantages of adoption of the new innovation are clearly obvious. It requires a reorientation of thinking to allow the acceptance of the new.

Our familiar patterns when thinking about information is to look for solutions that are “tools.” The new, unfamiliar concept that we find challenging is the understanding that we do not know what we do not know when it come to data and its potential–that we must push into the frontier in order to do so–and doing so will require not only new technology that is oriented toward the optimization of data, its processing from information to knowledge, and its use, but also a new way of thinking about it and how it will align with our organizational strategy.

This can only be done by first starting with a benchmark–to practically take stock–of where we individually as organizations and where we need to be in terms of understanding our mission or purpose. For project controls and project management there is no area more at odds with this alignment.

Recently, Dave Gordon in his blog The Practicing IT Project Manager argued why project managers needed to align their projects with organizational strategy. He noted that in 2015, during the development of the “Talent Triangle” that the Project Management Institute found that a major deficiency noted by organizations was that project managers needed to take an active role in aligning their projects with organizational strategy.

As I previously noted, there are a number of project management tools on the market today and a number of data visualization tools. Yet, there are significant gaps not only in the capture, quality, and processing of data, but also in the articulation of a consistent data strategy that aligns with the project organization and the overarching organization’s business strategy, goals, and priorities.

For example, in government, program managers spend a large portion of the year defending their programs to show that they are effectively and efficiently overseeing the expenditure of resources: that they are “executing program.” Failure to execute program will result in a budget mark, or worse, result in a re-baseline, or possible restructuring or cancellation. Projected production may be scaled back in favor of more immediate priorities.

Yet, none of our so-called “tools” fully capture program execution as it is defined by agencies and Congress. We have performance management tools, earned value tools, and the list can go on. A typical program manager in government spends almost five months assessing and managing program execution, and defending program and only a few minutes each month reviewing performance. This fact alone should be indicative that our priorities are misaligned.

The intersection of organizational alignment and program management in this case is related to resource utilization and program execution. No doubt, project controls and performance management contribute to our understanding of program execution, but they are removed from informing both the program manager and the organization in a comprehensive manner about execution, risk, and opportunity–and whether those elements conflict with or align with the agency’s goals. They are even further removed from an understanding of decisions related to program execution on the interrelationships across spectrum of the project and program portfolio.

The reason for this condition is that the data is currently not being captured and processed in a comprehensive manner to be positioned for its effective exploitation and utilization in meeting the needs of the various levels of the organization, nor does the perception of the specific data needed align with organizational needs.

Correspondingly, in construction and upstream oil and gas, project managers and stakeholders are most concerned with scope, timeliness, and the inevitable questions of claims–especially the avoidance or equitable settlement of the last.

As with government, our data strategy must align with our organizational goals and vision from the perspective of all stakeholders in the effort. At the heart of this alignment is data and those technologies “fitted” to exploit it and align it with our needs.

Sledgehammer: Pisano Talks!

My blogging hiatus is coming to an end as I take a sledgehammer to the writer’s block wall.

I’ve traveled far and wide over the last six months to various venues across the country and have collected a number of new and interesting perspectives on the issues of data transformation, integrated project management, and business analytics and visualization. As a result, I have developed some very strong opinions regarding the trends that work and those that don’t regarding these topics and will be sharing these perspectives (with the appropriate supporting documentation per usual) in following posts.

To get things started this post will be relatively brief.

First, I will be speaking along with co-presenter John Collins, who is a Senior Acquisition Specialist at the Navy Engineering & Logistics Office, at the Integrated Program Management Workshop at the Hyatt Regency in beautiful downtown Baltimore’s Inner Harbor 10-12 December. So come on down! (or over) and give us a listen.

The topic is “Unlocking Data to Improve National Defense Systems”. Today anyone can put together pretty visualizations of data from Excel spreadsheets and other sources–and some have made quite a bit of money doing so. But accessing the right data at the right level of detail, transforming it so that its information content can be exploited, and contextualizing it properly through integration will provide the most value to organizations.

Furthermore, our presentation will make a linkage to what data is necessary to national defense systems in constructing the necessary artifacts to support the Department of Defense’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) process and what eventually becomes the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP).

Traditionally information capture and reporting has been framed as a question of oversight, reporting, and regulation related to contract management, capital investment cost control, and DoD R&D and acquisition program management. But organizations that fail to leverage the new powerful technologies that double processing and data storage capability every 18 months, allowing for both the depth and breadth of data to expand exponentially, are setting themselves up to fail. In national defense, this is a condition that cannot be allowed to occur.

If DoD doesn’t collect this information, which we know from the reports of cybersecurity agencies that other state actors are collecting, we will be at a serious strategic disadvantage. We are in a new frontier of knowledge discovery in data. Our analysts and program managers think they know what they need to be viewing, but adding new perspectives through integration provide new perspectives and, as a result, will result in new indicators and predictive analytics that will, no doubt, overtake current practice. Furthermore, that information can now be processed and contribute more, timely, and better intelligence to the process of strategic and operational planning.

The presentation will be somewhat wonky and directed at policymakers and decisionmakers in both government and industry. But anyone can play, and that is the cool aspect of our community. The presentation will be non-commercial, despite my day job–a line I haven’t crossed up to this point in this blog, but in this latter case will be changing to some extent.

Back in early 2018 I became the sole proprietor of SNA Software LLC–an industry technology leader in data transformation–particularly in capturing datasets that traditionally have been referred to as “Big Data”–and a hybrid point solution that is built on an open business intelligence framework. Our approach leverages the advantages of COTS (delivering the 80% solution out of the box) with open business intelligence that allows for rapid configuration to adapt the solution to an organization’s needs and culture. Combined with COTS data capture and transformation software–the key to transforming data into information and then combining it to provide intelligence at the right time and to the right place–the latency in access to trusted intelligence is reduced significantly.

Along these lines, I have developed some very specific opinions about how to achieve this transformation–and have put those concepts into practice through SNA and delivered those solutions to our customers. Thus, the result has been to reduce both the effort and time to capture large datasets from data that originates in pre-processed data, and to eliminate direct labor and the duration to information delivery by more than 99%. The path to get there is not to apply an army of data scientists and data analysts that deals with all data as if it is flat and to reinvent the wheel–only to deliver a suboptimized solution sometime in the future after unnecessarily expending time and resources. This is a devolution to the same labor-intensive business intelligence approaches that we used back in the 1980s and 1990s. The answer is not to throw labor at data that already has its meaning embedded into its information content. The answer is to apply smarts through technology, and that’s what we do.

Further along these lines, if you are using hard-coded point solutions (also called purpose-built software) and knitted best-of-breed, chances are that you will find that you are poorly positioned to exploit new technology and will be obsolete within the next five years, if not sooner. The model of selling COTS solutions and walking away except for traditional maintenance and support is dying. The new paradigm will be to be part of the solution and that requires domain knowledge that translates into technology delivery.

More on these points in future posts, but I’ve placed the stake in the ground and we’ll see how they hold up to critique and comment.

Finally, I recently became aware of an extremely informative and cutting-edge website that includes podcasts from thought leaders in the area of integrated program management. It is entitled InnovateIPM and is operated and moderated by a gentleman named Rob Williams. He is a domain expert in project cost development, with over 20 years of experience in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. Robin has served in a variety of roles throughout his career and is now focuses on cost estimating and Front-End Loading quality assurance. His current role is advanced project cost estimator at Marathon Petroleum’s Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City.

Rob was also nice enough to continue a discussion we started at a project controls symposium and interviewed me for a podcast. I’ll post additional information once it is posted.

Take Me To The River, Part 3, Technical Performance and Risk Management Digital Elements of Integrated Program Management

Part three of this series of articles on the elements of Integrated Program and Project Management will focus on two additional areas of IPM: technical performance and risk management. Prior to jumping in, however–and given the timeframe over which I’ve written this series–a summary to date is in order.

The first part of our exploration into IPM digital inventory concerned cost elements. Cost in this sense was broadly defined as any cost elements that need to be of interest to a project or program managers and their  teams. I first clarified our terms by defining the differences between project and program management–and how those differences will influence our focus. Then I outlined the term cost as falling into the following categories:

  1. Contract costs and the cost categories within the organizational hierarchy;
  2. Cost estimates, “colors” of money where such distinctions exist, and cashflow;
  3. Additional costs that relate to the program or project effort that are not always directly attributed to the effort, such as PMA, furnished materials or labor, corollary and supporting efforts on the part of the customer, and other overhead and G&A type costs;
  4. Contract cost performance under earned value management (EVM); and
  5. Portfolio management considerations and total cost of ownership.

The second part of this exposition concerned schedule elements, that is, time-phased planning and performance that is essential to any project or program effort. The article first discussed the primacy of the schedule in project and program planning and execution, given its ties in defining the basis for the cost elements addressed in the first part of the series. I then discussed the need for integrated planning as the basis for a valid executable schedule and PMB, the detailed elements and citations of the sources of that information in the literature and formal guidance, the role of framing assumptions in the construction of schedule and cost plans with its holistic approach to go/no-go decision-making, and, finally, the role of the schedule in establishing the project and program battle rhythm.

Now, in this final section, we will determine the other practical elements of IPM beyond even my expansive view of cost and schedule integration.

Technical Performance Management

Given this paper that resulted from a programmatic effort in Navy regarding Technical Performance Management (TPM), it is probably not surprising that I will start here. My core paper in the link above represents what I viewed as an initial effort at integration of TPM to determine impacts of that performance within program cost performance (EVM) projections. But this approach was based on the following foundations:

a. That the solution needed to tie technical achievement to EVM so that it represented greater fidelity to performance than what I viewed as indirect and imprecise methods; such as WBS elements that contained partial or tangential relationships to technical performance measures, and more subjective and arbitrary methods, such as percent complete.

b. That the approach needed to be tied to established systems engineering methods of technical risk management.

c. That the solution should be simple to implement and be statistically valid in its results, tested by retrospective analyses that performed forensic what-if analysis against the ultimate results.

One need only to look at the extensive bibliography that accompanied my paper to understand that there were clear foundations for TPM, but it remained–and in some quarters remains–a controversial concept that provoked resistance, though programs clearly note achievement of technical requirements. For example, the foundations of technical risk management and tracking that the paper cited were in use at what was Martin Marietta for many years. Thus, why the resistance to change?

First, I think, is that the domain of project performance has rested too long in the hands of the EVM community with its historical foundations in cost and financial management, with a risk averse approach to new innovations. Second, given this history, the natural differences between program management, systems engineering, and earned value SMEs created a situation where there just wasn’t the foundation necessary for any one group to take ownership of this development in systems and business intelligence improvement. Even in industry, such cross-domain initiatives tend to initially garner both skepticism, if not outright cynicism, and resistance by personnel unsure of how the new measures will affect assessment of their work.

But keep in mind that, dating myself a bit, this is the same type of reaction that organizations experienced during the first wave of digitization of work. The reaction to each initiative that I witnessed, from the introduction of desktop computers connected to a central server, to the introduction of the first PCs, to the digitization of work products were met with the common refrain at the time that it was too experimental, or too transient, or too unstable, or too unproven, until it wasn’t any of those things.

I also overstate this resistance a bit. Over the last 20 years organizations within the military services adopted this method–or a variation–of TPM integration, as have some commercial companies. Furthermore, thinking and contributions on TPM have advanced in the intervening years.

The elements of technical performance management can be found in the language of the scope being planned. The brilliant paper authored by Glen B. Alleman, Thomas J. Coonce, and Rick A. Price entitled “Building a Credible Performance Measurement Baseline”, establishes the basis for tying project and program performance to technical achievement. These elements are measures of effectiveness (MoEs), measures of performance (MoPs), technical performance measures (TPMs), and key performance parameters and indicators (KPPs and KPIs). Taken together these define the framing assumptions for the project or program.

When properly constructing the systems, procedures, and artifacts from the decomposition of planning documents and performance language, the proper assignment of these elements to the WBS and specific work packages establishes a strong foundation for tying project and program success to both overall technical performance and the framing assumptions implicit in the effort.

What this means is that there also may be a technical performance baseline, which acts in parallel to the cost-focused performance management baseline. This technical performance baseline is the same as the work that is planned at the work package level for planned work. The assessment of progress is further decomposed to look at the timeframe at that point of progress within the context of the integrated master schedule (the IMS). We ask ourselves as a function of risk: what is the chance of achieving the next threshold in our technical performance plan?

As with all elements of work, our MoEs, MoPs, TPMs, KPPs, and KPIs do not reside at the same level of overall performance management and tracking within the WBS hierarchy. Some can be tracked to the lowest level, usually at work package, some will have contributions from lower levels and be summarized at the control account level, and others are at the total project or program level, with contributors from specific lower levels of the WBS structure.

A common example of what is claimed is a difficult technical performance measure is the factor of weight in aircraft design and production. Weight is an essential factor and must be in alignment with the mission of the aircraft. For example, if an aircraft is being built for the Navy, chances are high that the expectation is for it to be able to take off and land on a moving carrier deck. Take off requires coming up to airspeed very quickly. Landings are especially hard, since they are essentially controlled crashes augmented by an arresting gear. Airframes, avionics, and engines must operate in a salt water environment that involves a metal ship. The electro-magnetic effects alone, if they are not mitigated in the design and systems on both aircraft and ship, will significantly degrade the ability of the aircraft to operate as intended. Controlling weight in this case is essential, especially when one considers the need for fuel, ordnance, and avoiding being detected and shot down.

In current practice, the process of tracking weight over the life of aircraft design and development is tightly controlled. It is a function of tradeoff analysis and decision-making with contributors from many sub-elements of the WBS hierarchy. Thus, the use of the factor of weight as an argument to defeat the need to tightly integrate technical measures to the performance measurement baseline is a canard. On the contrary, it is an argument for tighter and broader integration of IPM data and, in particular, ties our systems to–and thus making the projections and the basis of our decision-making a function of– risk management, which is the next topic.

Risk Management Elements and Integration

There is a good deal of literature on risk, so I will confine this section to how risk in terms of integrated project and program management.

For many subdomains within the project and program management, when one mentions the term “risk management” the view often encountered is that the topic at hand is applying Monte Carlo analysis using non-random random numbers to the integrated master schedule (IMS) to determine the probabilities of a range of task durations and completions. This is known as a Schedule Risk Analysis or SRA.

Most of the correlations today are based on the landmark paper by Philip M. Lurie and Matthew S. Goldberg with the sexy title, “An approximate method for sampling correlated random variables from partially specified distributions”. With Monte Carlo informed by Lurie-Goldberg (for short) we then can make inferences as to alternative critical paths and near-critical paths for time-phasing our work. Also, the contribution of each task in terms of its criticality and contribution to the critical path can be measured. Sensitivity analysis elements identifies the most critical risk elements.

If the integrated master schedule is truly integrated to resource and cost, Lurie-Goldberg allows us to defeat the single-point estimate heavy projections of EVM to calculate a range of cost outcomes by probability distribution. This same type of analysis can be done against the time-phased PMB.

But that is just one area of risk management, which is known as quantitative risk. Another area of risk which should be familiar to project and program managers is qualitative risk. The project and programmatic risk analysis of qualitative risk involves the following steps:

1. Risk identification

2. Risk evaluation

3. Risk handling, and

4. Continual risk management

This is a closed loop system, which garners a risk register, risk ranking, a risk matrix, risk handling and mitigation plans, and a risk handling waterfall chart. These artifacts of risk analysis will also require the monitoring of risk triggers, and cross-referencing to risk ownership.

Once again, though cost impacts are also calculated, with their probability of manifesting, the strongest tie of risk management begins with the integrated master schedule. Thus, conditional and probabilistic branching will provide the project and program team with a step-by-step what-if? analysis that provides alternative schedules that will also provide ranges of cost impact.

Mainstreaming Risk Management and TPM into IPM

In reality, project and program management is simply monitoring and forecasting without technical performance and risk management. Yet, these sub-domains are oftentimes confined to a few specialists or viewed as a dichotomous and independent processes under the general duties of the team.

The economic urgency and essentiality of integrated project and program management is the realization that technical achievement of the product, and the assessment and handling of risks along the course of that achievement, are at the core of project and program management.

Take Me To The River, Part 2, Schedule Elements–A Digital Inventory of Integrated Program Management Elements

Recent attendance at various forums to speak has interrupted the flow of this series on IPM elements. Among these venues I was engaged in discussions regarding this topic, as well as the effects of acquisition reform on the IT, program, and project management communities in the DoD and A&D marketplace.

For this post I will restrict the topic to what are often called schedule elements, though that is a nebulous term. Also, one should not draw a conclusion that because I am dealing with this topic following cost elements, that it is somehow inferior in importance to those elements. On the contrary, planning and scheduling are integral to applying resources and costs, in tracking cost performance, and in our systemic analysis its activities, artifacts, and elements are antecedent to cost element considerations.

The Relative Position of Schedule

But the takeaway here is this: under no circumstances should any program or project manager believe that cost and schedule systems represent a dichotomy, nor a hierarchy, of disciplines. They are interdependent and the behavior noted in one will be manifested in the other.

This is important to keep in mind, because the software industry, more than any other, has been responsible for reinforcing and solidifying this (erroneous) perspective. During the first generation of desktop application development, software solutions were built to automate the functions of traditional line and staff functions. This made a great deal of sense.

From a sales and revenue perspective, it is easier to sell a limited niche software “tool” to an established customer base that will ensure both quick acceptance and immediate realization of productivity and labor savings. The connection from the purchase to ROI was easily traceable in the time span and at the level of the person performing their workaday tasks.

Thus, solutions were built to satisfy the needs of cost analysts, schedule analysts, systems engineers, cost estimators, and others. Where specific solutions left gaps, such spreadsheet solutions such as Microsoft Excel were employed to fill them. It was in no one’s interest to go beyond their core competency. Once a dominant or set of dominant incumbents (a monoposony) inhabited a niche, they employed the usual strategies for “stickiness” to defend territory and raise barriers to new entries.

What was not anticipated by many organizations was the fact that once you automate a function that the nature of the system, if one is to implement the most effective organizational structure, is transformed to conform to the most efficient flow and use of data–and its resulting transformation into information and intelligence. Oftentimes the skill set to use the intelligence does not exist because the resulting insights and synergy involved in taking larger and more comprehensive datasets which themselves are more credible and accurate was not anticipated in adjusting the organizational structure.

This is changing and must change, because the old way of using limited sets of data in the age of big(ger) data that provide a more comprehensive view of business conditions is not tenable. At least, not if a company or organization wants to stay relevant or profitable.

Characteristics and Basic Elements of the Project Schedule

If one were to perform a Google search of project schedule while reading this post, you would find a number of definitions, some of which overlap. For example, the PMBOK defines a schedule as, quite simply, “the planned dates for performing activities and the planned dates for meeting milestones.”

Thus our elements include planned dates, activities, and milestones. But is that all? Under this definition, any kind of plan, from a minor household renovation or upgrade to building an aircraft carrier would contain only these elements.

I don’t think so.

For complex projects and programs, which is the focus on this blog, our definition of a project schedule is a bit more comprehensive. If you go to the aforementioned A Guide for DoD Program Managers mentioned in my last post, you will find even less specificity.

The reason for this is that what we define as a project schedule is part and parcel of the planning phase of a project, which is then further specified in the specific time-phased planning elements for execution of the project through its lifespan into production. It is the schedule that ties together all of the disciplines in putting together a project–acquisition, systems engineering, cost estimating, and project performance management.

In attending scheduled-focused conferences over the years and in talking to program management colleagues is the refrain that:

a. It is hard to find a good scheduler, and

b. Constructing a schedule is more of an art than a science.

I can only say that this cedes the field to a small cadre of personnel who perform an essential function, but who do so with few objective tests of effectiveness or accountability–until it is too late.

But the reality is quite different from the fuzzy perception of schedule that is often assumed. All critical path method (CPM) schedules describe the same phenomena, though the lexicon will vary based on the specific proprietary application employed.

In government-focused and large commercial projects, the schedule is heart of planning and execution. In the DoD world it is known as the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS), which utilize the inherent bottom-up relationships of elements to determine the critical path. The main sources regarding the IMS have a great deal of overlap, but tend to be either aspirational (and unfortunately not prescriptive in defining the basic characteristics of an IMS) or reflect the “art over science” approach. For those following along these are the DoD Integrated Master Plan and Integrated Master Schedule Preparation and Use Guide of 21 October 2005, the NAVAIR Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) Guidebook of February 2010, and the NDIA Planning and Scheduling Excellence Guide (PASEG) of 9 March 2016 (unfortunately no current direct link).

The key elements that comprise an IMS, in addition to what we identified under the PMBOK are that it is networked schedule consisting of specific durations that are assigned to specific work tasks that must be accomplished in discrete work packages. In most cases these durations will be derived by some kind of either fixed, manual method or through the inherent optimization algorithm being applied by the CPM application. More on this below. But these work packages are discrete, meaning that they represent the full scope of the work that must be accomplished to during the specified duration for the creation of an end product. Discrete work is distinguished from level of effort (LOE) work, the latter being effort that is always expended, such as administrative and management tasks, that are not directly tied to the accomplishment of an end product.

These work packages are tied together to illustrate antecedent and progressive work that show predecessor and successor relationships. Long term planning activities, which cannot be fleshed out until more immediate work is completed are set aside as placeholders called planning packages. Each of the elements that are tracked in the IMS are based on the presentation of established criteria that define completion, events, and specific accomplishments.

The most comprehensive IMSs consist of detailed planning that include resources and elements of cost.

Detailed Elements of the IMS

Given these general elements, the best source of identifying the key elements of detailed schedules is also found in Department of Defense documents. The core document in this case is the Data Item Description for the IMS numbered as DI-MGMT-81650. The latest one is dated March 30, 2005. There are a minimum of 32 data elements, some of these already mentioned and which I will not repeat in this post since they are pretty well listed and identified in the source document.

For those not familiar with these documents, Data Item Descriptions (or DiDs–gotta love acronyms) represent the detailed technical documents for artifacts involved in the management of DoD-related operations. Thus, this provides us with a pretty good inventory of elements to source. But there are others that are implied.

For example, the 81650 DiD identifies an element known as “methodology.” What this means is that each scheduling application has an optimization engine where the true differences in schedule construction and intellectual property reside. Elements that affect these calculations are time-based, duration-based, float, and slack, and those related to resources.

These time-based elements consist of early start, early finish, late start, late finish. Duration-based elements consist of shortest time, longest time, greatest rank weight. An additional element related to schedule float identifies minimum slack. Resources are further delineated by the greatest work content and the greatest cumulative resource content.

I would note that the NDIA PASEG adds some sub-elements to this list that are based on the algorithmic result of the schedule engines and, thus, tends to ignore the antecedent salient elements of validating the optimization engine found above. These additional sub-elements are total float, free float, soft constraints, hard constraints, and–also found in the aforementioned DiD–program, task, and resource calendars.

Normally, this is where a survey would end–with schedule-specific data elements focused on the details of the schedule. But we’re going to challenge our assumptions a bit more.

Framing Assumptions of Schedules and Programs

The essential document that provides a definition of the term “framing assumption” was published by RAND Corporation in 2014 entitled Identifying Acquisition Framing Assumptions Through Structured Deliberation by Mark V. Arena and Lauren A. Mayer.  The definition of a framing assumption is “any explicit or implicit assumption that is central is shaping cost, schedule, or performance expectations.”

As I have explored in my prior post, the use of the term “cost” is a fuzzy one. To some it means earned value management, which measures a small part of the costs of development and ownership of a system. To others it means total cost of ownership. Schedule is an implicit part of this definition, and then we have performance expectations, which I will deal with in a separate post.

But we can apply the concept of framing assumptions in two ways.

The first applies to the assumed purpose of the schedule. What do we construct one? This goes back to my earlier statement that “…the schedule…ties together all of the disciplines in putting together a project–acquisition, systems engineering, cost estimating, and project performance management.”

For the NDIA PASEG the IMS is a “tool, not just a report” that “provides an ever-changing window into the progress (or lack of it) of current work effort. The strategic mission of the schedule is to point out future risks and opportunities.”

For the NAVAIR IMS Guide the IMS “At a top level…contain(ing) the networked, detailed tasks necessary to ensure successful program execution…” that “capture(s) project tasks and task relationships”, “show(s) the magnitude and how long each task will take”, “show(s) resources, durations, and constraints for each task” and “show(s) the critical path.”

For the DiD 81650 “The Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) is an integrated schedule containing the networked, detailed tasks necessary to ensure successful program execution.”

But the most comprehensive definition that goes to the core of the purpose of an IMS can be found in paragraph 1.2 of the DoD Integrated Master Plan and Integrated Master Schedule Preparation and Use Guide (IMP/IMS Guide). The elements of this purpose is worth transcribing, because if we have a requirement and cannot ask the “So What?” question, that is, if we cannot effectively determine why something must be done, then it probably does not need to be done (or we need to apply rigor in the development our expertise).

For what the IMP/IMS Guide does is clearly tie the schedule to the programmatic framing assumptions (used in the context in which RAND meant it) from initial acquisition through planning. Thus, the Integrated Master Plan (IMP) is firmly established as an antecedent and intermediate planning process (not merely an artifact or tool), that results in the program R&D execution process.

Taken in whole these processes and the resulting artifacts of the processes provide:

a. Provides offerors and acquiring activities with detailed execution planning, organization, and scheduling information that sets realistic expectations for the resulting contract action.

b. Serves as the execution plan for how the supplier will meet the contract’s performance requirements within cost and schedule constraints.

c. Provides a basis for integrating all of the functions involved in development and deployment of the system being acquired and, after award, sets the framing assumptions of the program.

d. Provides the basis for determining and assessing progress, identifying risks, determining the basis for contractual award fees and penalties, assess progress on Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) and Technical Performance Measures (TPMs), determine alternative paths to project completion, and determine opportunities for innovation and new acquisitions not apparent at the time of the award.

What all of this means is that the Integrated Master Schedule is too important to be left to the master scheduler. Yes, the schedule is a “tool” to those at the most basic tactical level in work execution. Yes, it is also an artifact and record.

But, more importantly, it is the comprehensive notional representation of the project’s or program’s scope, effort, progress, and assessment.

Private and Government-focused Industry Practice

A word has to mentioned here about the difference in practice between purely private industry practice in managing large projects and programs, and the skewing in the posts that focus on those industries that focus on public sector acquisition.

In the listing of schedule elements listed earlier there is reference to resources and elements of cost, yet here is an area that standard practice diverges. In private industry the application of resource assignments to specific work is standard practice and found in the IMS.

In companies focused on the public sector and DoD, the practice is to establish a different set of data outside of the schedule to manage resources. Needless to say this creates problems of validation of data across disparate systems related to the lowest level of planning and execution of a project or program. The basis for it, I think, relates to viewing the schedule as a “tool” and not the basis for project execution. This “tool” mindset also allows for separate “earned value engines” that oftentimes do not synchronize with the execution of the schedule, not only undermining the practical value of both, but also creating systems complexity and inefficiency where none need exist.

Another gap found in many areas of public acquisition concerns the development of an integrated master plan antecedent to the integrated master schedule. The cause here, once again, I believe is viewing the discipline of systems engineering separate; one that is somehow walled off from the continuing assessment of program execution, though that assumption is not supported by program phasing and milestone planning and achievement.

From the perspective of Integrated Program/Project Management, these considerations cannot be ignored, and so our inventory of essential data elements must include elements from these practices.

But Wait! There’s More!

Most discussions at conferences and professional meetings will usually stop at this point–viewing cost and schedule integration as the essence of IPM–with “cost’ limited to EVM. Some will add some “oh by the ways” such as technical performance and risk. I will address these in the next post as well.

But there are also other systems and processes that are relevant to our inventory. But what I have covered thus far in this series should challenge you if you have been paying attention.

I tackled cost first because of the assumptions implicit in equating it with EVM, and then went on to demonstrate that there are other elements of cost that provide a more comprehensive view. This is not denigrate the value of EVM, since it is an essential process in project management, but to demonstrate that its analytics are not comprehensive and, as with any complex system, require the contribution of additional information, depending on the level and type of work performance and progress being recorded and assessed.

In this post I have tacked the IMS, and have demonstrated that it is not supplementary process, but central to all other processes and actions being taken in the execution of the project or program. Many times people enter the schedule from an assessment of cost performance–tracing cost drivers to specific schedule activities and then tasks. But this has it backwards, based on the best technology available sometime in the late 1990s.

It is the schedule that brings together all relevant information from our execution and control processes and systems. It seems to me that perhaps the first place one goes is the schedule, that the first element to trace are those related to schedule slippage and unexpected resource consumption, and then to trace these to contract cost impact.

But, of course, there is more–and these other elements may turn out to be of greater consequence than just cost and schedule considerations. More on these in my next post.

In Closing: Battle Rhythm and the Plans of the Day and Week

When I was on active duty in the Navy we planned our days and weeks around a Plan of the Day or Plan of the Week. This is a posted agenda so that the entire ship or command understands the major events that affect its operations. It establishes focus on the main events at hand and fosters communication both laterally and vertically within the chain of command.

As one rises in rank and responsibility it is important to understand the operational tempo of the unit or ship, its systems, and subsystems. This is important in avoiding crisis management.This is known as Battle Rhythm.

Baked into the schedule (assuming proper construction and effective integrated product teaming) are the major events, milestones, and expected achievement of the program or project. Thus, there are events that should be planned around and anticipation of these items on a daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, and major milestone basis.

Given an effective battle rhythm, a PM should never complain about performance and progress indicators “looking into the rear view mirror”. If that is the case then perhaps the PM should look at the effectiveness and timeliness of the underlying project and program systems.Thus, when a PMO complains of information and intelligence being too late to be actionable, it is actually describing a condition of ineffective, latent, and disjointed information and intelligence systems.

Thus, our next step in our next post is to identify more salient IPM elements that cut to the heart of the matter.

Take Me to the River, Part 1, Cost Elements – A Digital Inventory of Integrated Program Management Elements

In a previous post I recommended a venue focused on program managers to define what constitutes integrated program management. Since that time I have been engaged with thought leaders and influencers in both government and industry, many of whom came to a similar conclusion independently, agree in this proposition and who are working to bring it about.

My own interest in this discussion is from the perspective of maximization of the information ecosystem that underlies and describes the systems known as projects and programs. But what do I mean by this? This is more than a gratuitous question, because oftentimes the information essential to defining project and program performance and behavior are intermixed, and therefore diluted and obfuscated, by confusion with those of the overall enterprise.

Project vs. Program

What a mean by the term project in this context is an organization that is established around a defined effort of fixed duration (a defined beginning and projected end) that is specifically planned and organized for the development and deployment of a particular end item, state, or result, with an identified set of resources assigned and allocated to achieve its goals.

A program is defined as a set of interrelated projects and sub-projects which is also of fixed duration that is specifically planned and organized not only for the development and deployment, but also the continues this role through sustainment (including configuration control), of a particular end item, state, or result, with an identified set of resources assigned and allocated to achieve its goals. As such, the program management team also is the first level life-cycle manager of the end item, state, or result, and participates with other levels of the organization in these activities. (More on life-cycle costs below).

Note the difference in scope and perspective, though oftentimes we use these terms interchangeably.

For shorthand, a small project of short duration operates at the tactical level of planning. A larger project, which because of size, complexity, duration, and risk approaches the definition of a program, operates at the operational level, as do most programs. Larger and more complex programs that will affect the core framing assumptions of the enterprise align their goals to the strategic level of planning. Thus, there are differences in scale, complexity and, hence, data points that can be captured at these various levels.

Another aspect of the question of establishing an integrated digital project and program management environment is sufficiency of data, which relates directly to scale. Sufficiency in this regard is defined as whether there is enough data to establish a valid correlation and, hopefully, draw a causation. Micro-economic foundations–and models–often fail because of insufficient data. This is important to keep in mind as we inventory the type of data available to us and its significance. Oftentimes additional data points can make up for those cases where there is insufficiency in the depth and quality of a more limited set of data points. Doing so will also mitigate subjectivity, especially in smaller efforts.

Thus, in constructing a project or program, regardless of its level of planning, we often begin by monitoring the most basic elements. These are usually described as cost, schedule, performance, and risk, though I will discuss and identify other contributors that can be indexed.

This first post will concentrate on the first set of elements–those that constitute cost. In looking at these, however, we will find that the elements within this category are a bit broader than what is currently used in determining project and program performance.

Contract Costs

When we refer to costs in project and program management we oftentimes are referring to those direct and indirect costs expended by the supplier over the course of the effort, particular in Cost Plus contractual efforts. The breakout of cost from a data perspective places it in subcategories:

Note that these are costs within the contract itself, as a cohesive, self-identifying entity. But there are other costs associated with our contracts which feed into program and project management. These are necessary to identify and capture if we are to take an holistic approach to these disciplines.

The costs that are anticipated by the contract are based on cost estimates, which need to be funded. These funded costs will be allocated to particular lines in the contract (CLINs), whether these be supporting contract efforts or deliverables. Thus, additional elements of our digital inventory include these items but lead us to our next categories.

Cost Estimates, Colors of Money, and Cash Flow

Cost estimates are the basis for determining the entire contract effort, and eventually make it into the project and program cost plan. Once cost estimates are applied and progress is tracked through the collection of actual costs, these elements are further traced to project and program activities, products, commodities, and other business categories, such as the indirect costs identified on the right hand side of the chart above.

Our cost plans need to be financed, as with any business entity. Though the most complex projects often are financed by some government entity because of their scale and impact, private industry–even among the largest companies–must obtain financing for the efforts at hand, whether these come from internal or external sources.

Thus two more elements present themselves: “colors” of money, that is, money that is provided for a specific purpose within the project and program cost plan which could also be made available for only some limited period of time, and the availability of that money sufficient to execute particular portions of the project or program, that is, cash flow.

The phase of the project or program will determine the type of money that is made available. These are also contained in the costs that are identified in the next section, but include, from a government financing perspective, Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) money, Procurement, Operations and Maintenance (O&M), and Military Construction (MILCON) dollars. By Congressional appropriation and authorization, each of these types of money may be provided for particular programs, and each type of authorization has a specific period in which they can be committed, obligated, and expended before they expire. The type of money provided also aligns with the phase of the project or program: whether it still be in development, production, deployment and acquisition, sustainment, or retirement.

These costs will be reflected in reporting that reflects actual and projected rates of expenditure, that will be tied to procurement, material management, and resource management systems.

Additional Relative Costs

As with all efforts, the supplier is not the only entity to incur costs on a development project or program. The customer also incurs costs, which must be taken into account in determining the total cost of the effort.

For anyone who has undergone any kind of major effort on their home, or even had to get things other workaday things done, like deciding when to change the tires on the car or when to get to the dentist implicitly understand that there is more effort in timing and determining the completion of these items than the cost of new kitchen cabinets, tires, or a filling. One must decide to take time off from work. One must look to their own cash flow to see if they have sufficient funds not only for the merchant, but for all of the sundry and associated tasks that must be done in preparation for and after the task’s completion. To choose to do one thing is to choose not to do another–an opportunity cost. Other people may be involved in the decision. Perhaps children are in the household and a babysitter is required. Perhaps the home life is so disrupted that another temporary abode is necessary on a short term basis.

All of these are costs that one must take into account, and at the individual level we do these calculations and plan these activities as a matter of fact.

In customer-supplier relationships the former incurs costs above the contract costs, which must be taken into account by the customer project or program executive. In the Department of Defense an associated element is called program management administration (PMA). For private entities this falls into allocated G&A and Overhead costs, aside from direct labor and material costs, but in all cases these are costs that have come about due to the decision to undertake the specific effort.

Other elements of cost on the customer side are contractually furnished facilities, property, material or equipment, and testing and evaluation costs.

Contract Cost Performance: Earned Value Management

I will further discuss EVM in more detail a later installment of this element inventory, but mention must be made of EVM since to exclude it is to be grossly remiss.

At core EVM is a financial measure of value against what has been physically achieved against a performance management baseline (PMB), which ties actual costs and completion of work through a work breakdown structure (WBS). It is focused on the contract level of performance, which in some cases may constitute the entire project, though not necessarily the entire effort for the program.

Linkages to the other cost elements I have delineated elsewhere in this post ranges from strong to non-existent. Thus, while an essential means of linking contractual achievement to work accomplishment that, at various levels of fidelity, is linked to actual technical achievement, it does not capture all of the costs in our data inventory.

An essential overview in understanding what it does capture is best summed up in the following diagram taken from the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) site:

Commercial EVM elements, while not necessarily using the same terminology or highly structured process, possess a similar structure in allocating costs and achievement against baseline costs in developmental efforts to work packages (oftentimes schedule tasks in resource-loaded schedules) under an integrated WBS structure with Management Reserve not included as part of the baseline.

Also note that commercial efforts often include their internal costs as part of the overall contractual effort in assessing earned value against actual work achievement, while government contracting efforts tend to exclude these inherent costs. That being said, it is not that there is no cost control in these elements, since strict ceilings often apply to PMA and other such costs, it is that contract cost performance does not take these costs, among others, into account.

Furthermore, the chart above provides us with additional sub-elements in our inventory that are essential in capturing data at the appropriate level of our project and program hierarchy.

Thus, for IPM, EVM is one of many elements that are part our digital inventory–and one that provides a linkage to other non-cost elements (WBS). But in no way should it be viewed as capturing all essential costs associated with a contractual effort, aside from the more expansive project or program effort.

Portfolio Management and Life-Cycle Costs

There is another level of management that is essential in thinking about project and program management, and that is the program executive level. In the U.S. military services these are called Program Executive Officers (PEOs). In private industry they are often product managers, CIOs, and other positions that often represent the link between the program management teams and the business operations side of the organization. Thus, this is also the level of management organized to oversee a number of individual projects and programs that are interrelated based on mission, commodity, or purpose. As such, this level of management often concentrates on issues across the portfolio of projects and programs.

The main purpose of the portfolio management level is to ensure that project and program efforts are aligned with the strategic goals of the organization, which includes an understanding of the total cost of ownership.

In performing this purpose one of the functions of portfolio management is to identify risks that may manifest within projects and programs, and to determine the most productive use of limited resources across them, since they are essentially competing for the same dollars. This includes cost estimates and re-allocations to address ontological, aleatory, and epistemic risk.

Furthermore, the portfolio level is also concerned with the life-cycle factors of the item under development, so that there is effective hand-off at the production and sustainment phases. The key here is to ensure that each project or program, which is focused on the more immediate goals of project and program execution, continues to meet the goals of the organization in terms of life-cycle costs, and its effectiveness in meeting the established goals essential to the project or program’s framing assumptions.

But here we are focusing on cost, and so the costs involved are trade-off costs and opportunities, assessments of return on investment, and the aforementioned total cost of ownership of the end item or system. The costs that contribute to the total cost of ownership include all of the development costs, external and internal program management costs, procurement costs, operations and support costs, maintenance and life extension costs, and system retirement costs.

Conclusion

I believe that the survey of cost elements presented in this initial post illustrates that present digital project and program management systems are limited and immature–capturing and evaluating only a small portion of the total amount of available data.

These gaps make it impossible, for example, to determine the relative significance any one element–and the analytics that can derived from it–over another; not to mention the inability to provide the linkage among these absent elements that would garner insights into cause-and-effect and predictive behavior so that we have enough time to influence the outcome.

It is also clear that, when we strive to define what constitutes integrated project and program management, that we must learn what is of most importance to the PM in performing those duties that are viewed as essential to success, and which are not yet captured in our analytical and predictive systems.

Only when our systems reach the level of cohesiveness and comprehensiveness in providing organizational insight and intelligence essential to project or program management will PMs ignore them at their own risk. In getting there we must first identify what can be captured from the activities that contribute to our efforts.

My next post will identify essential elements related to planning and scheduling.

 

Note: I am indebted to Defense Acquisition University’s resources in my research across many of my postings and link to them for the edification of the reader. For more insight into many of the points raised in this post I would recommend that readers familiarize themselves with A Guide for DoD Program Managers.

 

Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow–Post-Workshop Blogging…and some Low Comedy

It’s been a while since I posted to my blog due to meetings and–well–day job, but some interesting things occurred during the latest Integrated Program Management (IPMD) of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) meeting that I think are of interest. (You have to love acronyms to be part of this community).

Program Management and Integrated Program Management

First off is the initiative by the Program Management Working Group to gain greater participation by program managers with an eye to more clearly define what constitutes integrated program management. As readers of this blog know, this is a topic that I’ve recently written about.

The Systems Engineering discipline is holding their 21st Annual Systems Engineering Conference in Tampa this year from October 22nd to the 25th. IPMD will collaborate and will be giving a track dedicated to program management. The organizations have issued a call for papers and topics of interest. (Full disclosure: I volunteered this past week to participate as a member of the PM Working Group).

My interest in this topic is based on my belief from my years of wide-ranging experience in duties from having served as a warranted government contracting officer, program manager, business manager, CIO, staff officer, and logistics officer that there is much more to the equation in defining IPM that transcends doing so through the prism of any particular discipline. Furthermore, doing so will require collaboration and cooperation among a number of project management disciplines.

This is a big topic where, I believe, no one group or individual has all of the answers. I’m excited to see where this work goes.

Integrated Digital Environment

Another area of interest that I’ve written about in the past involved two different–but related–initiatives on the part of the Department of Defense to collect information from their suppliers that is necessary in their oversight role not only to ensure accountability of public expenditures, but also to assist in project cost and schedule control, risk management, and assist in cost estimation, particularly as it relates to risk sharing cost-type R&D contracted project efforts.

Two major staffs in the Offices of the Undersecretary of Defense have decided to go with a JSON-type schema for, on the one hand, cost estimating data, and on the other, integrated cost performance, schedule, and risk data. Each initiative seeks to replace the existing schemas in place.

Both have been wrapped around the axle on getting industry to move from form-based reporting and data sharing to a data-agnostic solution that meet the goals of reducing redundancy in data transmission, reducing the number of submissions and data streams, and moving toward one version of truth that allows for SMEs on both sides of the table to concentrate on data analysis and interpretation in jointly working toward the goal of successful project completion and end-item deployment.

As with the first item, I am not a disinterested individual in this topic. Back when I wore a uniform I helped to construct DoD policy to create an integrated digital environment. I’ve written about this experience previously in this blog, so I won’t bore with details, but the need for data sharing on cost-type efforts acknowledges the reality of the linkage between our defense economic and industrial base and the art of the possible in deploying defense-related end items. The same relationship exists for civilian federal agencies with the non-defense portion of the U.S. economy. Needless to say, a good many commercial firms unrelated to defense are going the same way.

The issue here is two-fold, I think, from speaking with individuals working these issues.

The first is, I think, that too much deference is being given to solution providers and some industry stakeholders, influenced by those providers, in “working the refs” through the data. The effect of doing so not only slows down the train and protects entrenched interests, it also gets in the way of innovation, allowing the slowest among the group to hold up the train in favor of–to put it bluntly–learning their jobs on the job at the expense of efficiency and effectiveness. As I expressed in a side conversion with an industry leader, all too often companies–who, after all, are the customer–have allowed themselves to view the possible by the limitations and inflexibility of their solution providers. At some point that dysfunctional relationship must end–and in the case of comments clearly identified as working the refs–they should be ignored. Put your stake in the ground and let innovation and market competition sort it out.

Secondly, cost estimating, which is closely tied to accounting and financial management, is new and considered tangential to other, more mature, performance management systems. My own firm is involved in producing a solution in support of this process, collecting data related to these reports (known collectively in DoD as the 1921 reports), and even after working to place that data in a common data lake, exploring with organizations what it tells us, since we are only now learning what it tells us. This is classical KDD–Knowledge Discovery in Data–and a worthwhile exercise.

I’ve also advocated going one step further in favor of the collection of financial performance data (known as the Contract Funds Status Report), which is an essential reporting requirement, but am frustrated to find no one willing to take ownership of the guidance regarding data collection. The tragedy here is that cost performance, known broadly as Earned Value Management, is a technique related to the value of work performance against other financial and project planning measures (a baseline and actuals). But in a business (or any enterprise), the fuel that drives the engine are finance-related, and two essential measures are margin and cash-flow. The CFSR is a report of program cash-flow and financial execution. It is an early measure of whether a program will execute its work in any given time-frame, and provides a reality check on the statistical measures of performance against baseline. It is also a necessary logic check for comptrollers and other budget decision-makers.

Thus, as it relates to data, there has been some push-back against a settled schema, where the government accepts flat files and converts the data to the appropriate format. I see this as an acceptable transient solution, but not an ultimate one. It is essential to collect both cost estimating and contract funds status information to perform any number of operations that relate to “actionable” intelligence: having the right executable money at the right time, a reality check against statistical and predictive measures, value analysis, and measures of ROI in development, just to name a few.

I look forward to continuing this conversation.

To Be or Not to Be Agile

The Section 809 Panel, which is the latest iteration of acquisition reform panels, has recommended that performance management using earned value not be mandated for efforts using Agile. It goes on, however, to assert that program executive “should approve appropriate project monitoring and control methods, which may include EVM, that provide faith in the quality of data and, at a minimum, track schedule, cost, and estimate at completion.”

Okay…the panel is then mute on what those monitoring and control measure will be. Significantly, if only subtly, the #NoEstimates crowd took a hit since the panel recommends and specifies data quality, schedule, cost and EAC. Sounds a lot like a form of EVM to me.

I must admit to be a skeptic when it comes to swallowing the Agile doctrine whole. Its micro-economic foundations are weak and much of it sounds like ideology–bad ideology at best and disproved ideology at worst (specifically related to the woo-woo about self-organization…think of the last speculative bubble and resulting financial crisis and depression along these lines).

When it comes to named methodologies I am somewhat from Missouri. I apply (and have in previous efforts in the Dark Ages back when I wore a uniform) applied Kanban, teaming, adaptive development (enhanced greatly today by using modern low-code technology), and short sprints that result in releasable modules. But keep in mind that these things were out there long before they were grouped under a common heading.

Perhaps Agile is now a convenient catch-all for best practices. But if that is the case then software development projects using this redefined version of Agile deserve no special dispensation. But I was schooled a bit by an Agile program manager during a side conversation and am always open to understanding things better and revising my perspectives. It’s just that there was never a Waterfall/Agile dichotomy just as there never really was a Spiral/Waterfall dichotomy. These were simply convenient development models to describe a process that were geared to the technology of the moment.

There are very good people on the job exploring these issues on the Agile Working Group in the IPMD and I look forward to seeing what they continue to come up with.

Rip Van Winkle Speaks!

The only disappointing presentation occurred on the second and last day of the meeting. It seemed we were treated by a voice from somewhere around the year 2003 that, in what can only be described as performance art involving free association, talked about wandering the desert, achieving certification for a piece of software (which virtually all of the software providers in the room have successfully navigated at one time or another), discovering that cost and schedule performance data can be integrated (ignoring the work of the last ten years on the part of, well, a good many people in the room), that there was this process known as the Integrated Baseline Review (which, again, a good many people in the room had collaborated on to both define and make workable), and–lo and behold–the software industry uses schemas and APIs to capture data (known in Software Development 101 as ETL). He then topped off his meander by an unethical excursion into product endorsement, selected through an opaque process.

For this last, the speaker was either unaware or didn’t care (usually called tone-deafness) that the event’s expenses were sponsored by a software solution provider (not mine). But it is also as if the individual speaking was completely unaware of the work behind the various many topics that I’ve listed above this subsection, ignoring and undermining the hard work of the other stakeholders that make up our community.

On the whole an entertaining bit of poppycock, which leads me to…

A Word about the Role of Professional Organizations (Somewhat Inside Baseball)

In this blog, and in my interactions with other professionals at–well–professional conferences–I check my self-interest in at the door and publicly take a non-commercial stance. It is a position that is expected and, I think, appreciated. For those who follow me on social networking like LinkedIn, posts from my WordPress blog originate from a separate source from the commercial announcements that are linked to my page that originate from my company.

If there are exhibitor areas, as some conferences and workshops do have, that is one thing. That’s where we compete and play; and in private side conversations customers and strategic partners will sometimes use the opportunity as a convenience to discuss future plans and specific issues that are clearly business-related. But these are the exceptions to the general rule, and there are a couple of reasons for this, especially at this venue.

One is because, given that while it is a large market, it is a small community, and virtually everyone at the regular meetings and conferences I attend already know that I am the CEO and owner of a small software company. But the IPMD is neutral ground. It is a place where government and industry stakeholders, who in other roles and circumstances are in a contractual or competing relationship, come to work out the best way of hashing out processes and procedures that will hopefully improve the discipline of program and project management. It is also a place of discovery, where policies, new ideas, and technologies can be vetted in an environment of collaboration.

Another reason for taking a neutral stance is simply because it is both the most ethical and productive one. Twenty years ago–and even in some of the intervening years–self-serving behavior was acceptable at the IPMD meetings where both leadership and membership used the venue as a basis for advancing personal agendas or those of their friends, often involving backbiting and character assassination. Some of those people, few in number, still attend these meetings.

I am not unfamiliar with the last–having been a target at one point by a couple of them but, at the end of the day, such assertions turned out to be without merit, undermining the credibility of the individuals involved, rightfully calling into question the quality of their character. Such actions cannot help but undermine the credibility and pollute the atmosphere of the organization in which they associate, as well.

Finally, the companies and organizations that sponsor these meetings–which are not cheap to organize, which I know from having done so in the past–deserve to have the benefit of acknowledgment. It’s just good manners to play nice when someone else is footing the bill–you gotta dance with those that brung you. I know my competitors and respect them (with perhaps one or two exceptions). We even occasionally socialize with each other and continue long-term friendships and friendly associations. Burning bridges is just not my thing.

On the whole, however, the NDIA IPMD meetings–and this one, in particular–was a productive and positive one, focused on the future and in professional development. That’s where, I think, that as a community we need to be and need to stay. I always learn something new and get my dose of reality from a broad-based perspective. In getting here the leadership of the organization (and the vast majority of the membership) is to be commended, as well as the recent past and current members of the Department of Defense, especially since the formation of the Performance Assessments and Root Cause Analysis (PARCA) office.

In closing, there were other items of note discussed, along with what can only be described as the best pair of keynote addresses that I’ve heard in one meeting. I’ll have more to say about some of the concepts and ideas that were presented there in future posts.

Here It Is–Integrated Project Management and Its Definition

I was recently at a customer site and, while discussing the topic of this post, I noticed a book displayed prominently on the bookshelf behind my colleague entitled “Project Management Using Earned Value” by Gary Humphreys. It is a book that I have on my shelf as well and is required reading by personnel in my company.

I told my colleague: “One of the problems with our ability to define IPM is the conceit embedded in the title of that book behind you.”

My colleague expressed some surprise at my intentionally provocative comment, but he too felt that EVM had taken on a role that was beyond its intent, and so asked for more clarification. Thus, this post is meant to flesh out some of these ideas.

But before I continue, here was my point: while the awkward wording of the title unintentionally creates a syllogism that can be read as suggesting that applying earned value will result in project management–a invalid conclusion based on a specious assumption–there are practitioners who would lend credence to that idea.

Some History in Full Disclosure

Before I begin some full disclosure is in order. When I was on active duty in the United State Navy I followed my last mentor to the Pentagon, who felt that my perspective on acquisition and program management would be best served on the staff of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, which subsequently also came to include logistics.

The presence of a uniformed member of the Armed Forces was unusual for that staff at the time (1996). My boss, Dan Czelusniak, a senior SES who was a highly respected leader, program manager, engineer, thought leader, and, for me, mentor, had first brought me on his staff at the U.S. Navy Naval Air Systems Command in PEO(A), and gave me free reign to largely define my job.

For that assignment I combined previously separate duties, taking on the job as Program Manager of an initiative to develop a methodology of assessing technical performance measurement, as Business Manager of the PEO which led me to the use of earned value management and its integration with other program indicators and systems, the development of a risk assessment system for the programs in the PEO for the establishment of a DoD financial management reserve, support to the program managers and their financial managers in the budget hearing process, and as CIO for the programs in identifying and introducing new information technologies in their support.

While there, I had decided to retire from the service after more than 22 years on active duty, but my superiors felt that I had a few more ideas to contribute to the DoD, and did what they could to convince me to stay on a while longer. Having made commitments in my transition, I set my date in the future, but agreed to do the obligatory Pentagon tour of duty to cap my career. Dan had moved over to Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (USD(A&T)) and decided that he wanted me on the OUSD(A&T) staff.

As in PEO(A), Mr. Czelusniak gave me the freedom to define my position with the approval of my immediate superior, Mr. Gary Christle. I chose the title as Lead Action Officer, Integrated Program Management. Mr. Christle, who was a brilliant public servant and thought leader as well, widely heralded in the EVM community, asked me with a bemused expression, “What is integrated program management?” I responded: “I don’t know yet sir but I intend to find out.” Though I did not have a complete definition, I had a seed of an idea.

My initiatives on the staff began with an exploration of data and information. My thinking along these lines early in my career were influenced by a book entitled “Logistics in the National Defense” by retired Admiral Henry E. Eccles, written in 1959. It is a work that still resonates today and established the important concept that “logistics serves as the bridge between a nation’s economy and its forces and defines the operational reach of the joint force commander.” The U.S. Army site referenced for this quote calls him the Clausewitz of logistics.

Furthermore my work as Program Manager of the Technical Performance Management project, and earlier assignments as program manager of IT and IM projects, provided me with insights into the interrelationships of essential data that was being collected as a matter of course in R&D efforts that would provide the basis for a definition of IPM.

In concluding my career on the OSD staff, I produced two main products, among others: a methodology for the integration of technical performance risk in project management performance, and the policy of moving toward what became the DoD-wide policy for an Integrated Digital Environment (IDE). This last initiative was produced with significant contributions from the staff of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) as well as additional work by my colleague on the A&T staff, Reed White.

Products from IDE included the adoption of the ANSI X12 839 transaction set. Its successors, such as the DCARC UN/CEFACT XML and other similar initiatives are based on that same concept and policy, though, removed by many years, the individuals involved may be only vaguely aware of that early policy–or the controversy that had to be overcome in its publication given its relatively common sense aspects from today’s perspective.

The Present State

Currently there are at least four professional organizations that have attempted to tackle the issue of integrated program and project management. These are the Project Management Institute, NDIA’s Integrated Program Management Division, the College of Performance Management, and the American Association of Cost Engineers. There are also other groups focused in systems engineering, contracting, and cost estimating that contribute to the literature.

PMI is an expansive organization and, oftentimes, the focus of the group is on aspirational goals by those who wish to obtain a credential in the discipline. The other groups tend to emphasize their roots in earned value management or cost engineering as the basis for a definition of IPM. The frustration of many professionals in the A&D and DoD world is that the essential input and participation of the program manager to define the essential data needed to define IPM, which goes beyond the seas of separation that define islands of data and expertise is missing.

Things didn’t used to be this way.

When I served at NAVAIR and the Pentagon the jointly-sponsored fall Integrated Program Management Conference held in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, would draw more than 600 attendees. Entire contingents from the military systems commands and program offices–as well as U.S. allied countries–would attend, lending the conference a synergy and forward-looking environment not found in other venues. Industries outside of aerospace and defense would also send representatives and contribute to the literature.

As anyone engaged in a scientific or engineering effort can attest, sharing expertise and perspectives among other like professionals from both industry and government is essential to developing a vital, professional, and up-to-date community of knowledge.

During the intervening years the overreaction of the public and the resulting political reaction to a few isolated embarrassing incidents at other professional conferences, and constraints on travel and training budgets, has contributed to a noticeable drop in attendance at these essential venues. But, I think there is also an internal contributing factor within the organizations themselves. That factor is that each views itself and its discipline as the nexus of IPM. Thus, to PMI, a collection of KPIs are the definition of IPM. To CPM and NDIA IPMD, earned value management is the link to IPM, and to AACEI Total Cost Management is the basis for IPM.

All of them cannot be correct and none possesses an overwhelming claim.

The present state currently finds members of each of these groups–all valuable subject matter experts, leaders,  and managers in their areas of concentration–essentially talking to themselves and each other, insulated in a bubble. There is little challenge in convincing another EVM SME that EVM is the basis for the integration of other disciplines. What is not being done is making a convincing case to program managers based on the merits.

A Modest Recommendation

Subsequent to the customer meeting that sent me to, once again, contemplate IPM, Gordon Kranz, President of Enlightened Integrated Program Management LLC posted the following question to LinkedIn:

Integrated Program Management – What is it?  Systems Engineering? Earned Value Management? Agile Development? Lean? Quality? Logistics? Building Information Modeling? …

He then goes on to list some basic approaches that may lead to answering that question. Still the question exists.

Mr. Kranz was the Deputy Director for Earned Value Management policy at the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2011-2015. During his term in that position I witnessed more innovation and improved relations between government and industry, which resulted in process improvements in accountability and transparency, than I had seen come out of that office over the previous ten years. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge concerning program management from both government and private industry. Now a private consultant, Gordon’s question goes to the heart of the debate in addressing the claims of those who claim to be the nexus of IPM.

So what is Integrated Project or Program Management? Am I any closer to answering that question than when Gary Christle first asked it of me over twenty years ago?

I think so but I abstain in answering the question, but only because in the end it is the community of program management in their respective verticals that must ultimately answer it. Only the participation and perspectives of practicing program managers and corporate management will determine the definition of IPM and the elements that underlie it. Self-interested software publishers, of which I am one, cannot be allowed to define and frame the definition, as much as it is tempting to do so.

These elements must be specific and must address the most recent misunderstandings that have arisen in the PM discipline, such as that there is a dichotomy between EVM and Agile–a subject fit for a different blog post.

So here is my modest recommendation: that the leaders of the program management community from the acquisition organizations in both industry and government–where the real power to make decisions resides and where the discussions that sparked this blog post began–find a sponsor for an IPM workshop that addresses this topic, with the goal of answering the core question. Make no mistake–despite my deference in this post, I intend to be part of the conversation in defining that term. But, in my opinion, no one individual or small group of specialized SMEs are qualified to do so.

Furthermore, doing so, I believe, is essential to the very survival of these essential areas of expertise, particularly given our ability to deploy more powerful information systems that allow us to process larger sets of data. The paradox of more powerful processing of bigger data results in a level of precision that reveals the need for fewer, not more, predictive indicators and less isolated line-and-staff specialized expertise. Discovery-driven project management is here today, bridging islands of data, and providing intelligence in new and better ways that allow for a more systemic approach to project management.

Thus, in this context, a robust definition of Integrated Project Management is an essential undertaking for the discipline.

Synergy — The Economics of Integrated Project Management

The hot topic lately in meetings and the odd conference on Integrated Project Management (IPM) often focuses on the mechanics of achieving that state, bound by the implied definition of current regulation, which has also become–not surprisingly–practice. I think this is a laudable goal, particularly given both the casual resistance to change (which always there by definition to some extent) and in the most extreme cases a kind of apathy.

I addressed the latter condition in my last post by an appeal to professionalism, particularly on the part of those in public administration. But there is a more elemental issue here than the concerns of project analysts, systems engineers, and the associated information managers. While this level of expertise is essential in the development of innovation, relying too heavily on this level in the organization creates an internal organizational conflict that creates the risk that the innovation is transient and rests on a slender thread. Association with any one manager also leaves innovation vulnerable due to the “not invented here” tact taken by many new managers in viewing the initiatives of a predecessor. In business this (usually self-defeating) approach becomes more extreme the higher one goes in the chain of command (the recent Sears business model anyone?).

The key, of course, is to engage senior managers and project/program managers in participating in the development of this important part of business intelligence. A few suggestions on how to do this follow, but the bottom line is this: money and economics makes the implementation of IPM an essential component of business intelligence.

Data, Information, and Intelligence – Analysis vs. Reporting

Many years ago using manual techniques, I was employed in activities that required that I seek and document data from disparate sources, seemingly unconnected, and find the appropriate connections. The initial connection was made with a key. It could be a key word, topic, individual, technology, or government. The key, however, wasn’t the end of the process. The validity of the relationship needed to be verified as more than mere coincidence. This is a process well known in the community specializing in such processes, and two good sources to understand how this was done can be found here and here.

It is a well trod path to distinguish between the elements that eventually make up intelligence so I will not abuse the reader in going over it. Needless to say that a bit of data is the smallest element of the process, with information following. For project management what is often (mis)tagged as predictive analytics and analysis is really merely information. Thus, when project managers and decision makers look at the various charts and graphs employed by their analysts they are usually greeted with a collective yawn. Raw projections of cost variance, cost to complete, schedule variance, schedule slippage, baseline execution, Monte Carlo risk, etc. are all building blocks to employing business intelligence. But in and of themselves they are not intelligence because these indicators require analysis, weighting, logic testing, and, in the end, an assessment that is directly tied to the purpose of the organization.

The role and application of digitization is to make what was labor intensive less so. In most cases this allows us to apply digital technology to its strength–calculation and processing of large amounts of data to create information. Furthermore, digitization now allows for effective lateral integration among datasets given a common key, even if there are multiple keys that act in a chain from dataset to dataset.

At the end of the line what we are left with is a strong correlation of data integrated across a number of domains that contribute to a picture of how an effort is performing. Still, even given the most powerful heuristics, a person–the consumer–must validate the data to determine if the results possess validity and fidelity. For project management this process is not as challenging as, say, someone using raw social networking data. Project management data, since it is derived from underlying systems that through their processing mimic highly structured processes and procedures, tends to be “small”, even when it can be considered Big Data form the shear perspective of size. It is small Big Data.

Once data has been accumulated, however, it must be assessed so as to ensure that the parts cohere. This is done by assessing the significance and materiality of those parts. Once this is accomplished the overall assessment must then be constructed so that it follows logically from the data. That is what constitutes “actionable intelligence”: analysis of present condition, projected probable outcomes, recommended actions with alternatives. The elements of this analysis–charts, graphs, etc., are essential in reporting, but reporting these indices is not the purpose of the process. The added value of an analyst lies in the expertise one possesses. Without this dimension a machine could do the work. The takeaway from this point, however, isn’t to substitute the work with software. It is to develop analytical expertise.

What is Integrated Project Management?

In my last post I summed up what IPM is, but some elaboration and refinement is necessary.

I propose that Integrated Project Management is defined as that information necessary to derive actionable intelligence from all of the relevant cross-domain information involved in the project organization. This includes cost performance, schedule performance, financial performance and execution, contract implementation, milestone achievement, resource management, and technical performance. Actionable intelligence in this context, as indicated above, is that information that is relevant to the project decision-making authority which effectively identifies specific probable qualitative and quantitative risks, risk impact, and risk handling necessary to make project trade-offs, project re-baselining or re-scope, cost-as-an-independent variable (CAIV), or project cancellation decisions. Underlying all of this are feedback loop systems assessments to ensure that there is integrity and fidelity in our business systems–both human and digital.

The data upon which IPM is derived comes from a finite number of sources. Thus, project management data lends itself to solutions that break down proprietary syntax and terminology. This is really the key to achieving IPM and one that has garnered some discussion when discussing the process of data normalization and rationalization with other IT professionals. The path can be a long one: using APIs to perform data-mining directly against existing tables or against a data repository (or warehouse or lake), or pre-normalizing the data in a schema (given both the finite nature of the data and the finite–and structured–elements of the processes being documented in data).

Achieving normalization and rationalization in this case is not a notional discussion–in my vocation I provide solutions that achieve this goal. In order to do so one must expand their notion of the architecture of the appropriate software solution. The mindset of “tools” is at the core of what tends to hold back progress in integration, that is, the concept of a “tool” is one that is really based on an archaic approach to computing. It assumes that a particular piece of software must limit itself to performing limited operations focused on a particular domain. In business this is known as sub-optimization.

Oftentimes this view is supported by the organization itself where the project management team is widely dispersed and domains hoard information. The rice bowl mentality has long been a bane of organizational effectiveness. Organizations have long attempted to break through these barriers using various techniques: cross-domain teams, integrated product teams, and others.

No doubt some operations of a business must be firewalled in such a way. The financial management of the enterprise comes to mind. But when it comes to business operations, the tools and rice bowl mindset is a self-limiting one. This is why many in IT push the concept of a solution–and the analogue is this: a tool can perform a particular operation (turn a screw, hammer a nail, crimp a wire, etc.); a solution achieves a goal of the system that consists of a series of operations, which are often complex (build the wall, install the wiring, etc.). Software can be a tool or a solution. Software built as a solution contains the elements of many tools.

Given a solution that supports IPM, a pathway is put in place that facilitates breaking down the barriers that currently block effective communication between and within project teams.

The necessity of IPM

An oft-cited aphorism in business is that purpose drives profit. For those in public administration purpose drives success. What this means is that in order to become successful in any endeavor that the organization must define itself. It is the nature of the project–a planned set of interrelated tasks separately organized and financed from the larger enterprise, which is given a finite time and budget specifically to achieve a goal of research, development, production, or end state–that defines an organization’s purpose: building aircraft, dams, ships, software, roads, bridges, etc.

A small business is not so different from a project organization in a larger enterprise. Small events can have oversized effects. What this means in very real terms is that the core rules of economics will come to bear with great weight on the activities of project management. In the world in which we operate, the economics underlying both enterprises and projects punishes inefficiency. Software “tools” that support sub-optimization are inefficient and the organizations that employ them bear unnecessary risk.

The information and technology sectors have changed what is considered to be inefficient in terms of economics. At its core, information has changed the way we view and leverage information. Back in 1997 economists Brad DeLong and Michael Froomkin identified the nature of information and its impact on economics. Their concepts and observations have had incredible staying power if, for no other reason, because what they predicted has come to pass. The economic elements of excludability, rivalry, transparency have transformed how the enterprise achieves optimization.

An enterprise that is willfully ignorant of its condition is one that is at risk. Given that many projects will determine the success of the enterprise, a project that is willfully ignorant of its condition threatens the financial health and purpose of the larger organization. Businesses and public sector agencies can no longer afford not to have cohesive and actionable intelligence built on all of the elements that contribute to determining that condition. In this way IPM becomes not only essential but its deployment necessary.

In the end the reason for doing this comes down to profit on the one hand, and success on the other. Given the increasing transparency of information and the continued existence of rivalry, the trend in the economy will be to reward those that harness the potentials for information integration that have real consequences in the management of the enterprise, and to punish those who do not.