A STRONG LENS
How the CPR Works by Margaret C. Roth
A t the head of the Capability
Portfolio Review (CPR) pro- cess are the Under Secretary and Vice Chief of Staff of the
as
the staff proponent for organizing
and executing it. Contributing informa- tion on the portfolios are representatives from across the programmatic spectrum, including the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC); the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8; and the test- ing community.
“We run the meetings, get the schedule, David M. Markowitz, Technical Advi- sor to the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3.
“There’s a series of O-6 meetings, one- and two-star [meetings], and, when we can, a three-star will meet with the Vice Chief (see Figure 1). At that point, he said, “most of the work is done,” namely a detailed review of the portfolio with particular attention to selected issues.
“We try to get from [TRADOC] what are the requirements, and how old; reval- of strategic context so you could look at importance and redundancy to help stack them and there would be some form of strategy upfront,” Markowitz said. For instance, for a missile defense portfolio,
the initial focus would be on the range of threats, then on the needs of the force, resourcing, and how much the systems cost. This information, in turn, helps in determining how many of each system the Army needs and how quickly the Army needs to recapitalize it, he said.
Other considerations include industrial base
impacts, program schedules, and synchronization across the portfolio.
“And then we identify issues: Is something out of sync?” he said.
Finally, as the DOTMLPF (Doctrine,
Organization, Training, Materiel, Lead- ership and Education, Personnel, and Facilities) is applied to each of the sys- tems, the doctrine piece is validated, for of meetings at successively higher levels until it gets to the G-3. “And then you see the doctrine is validated,” Markowitz said.
MAKING RECOMMENDATIONS
“We then provide a recommendation, or present the status of the portfolio and its health, to the Vice. Really what we want is a valid approval of what we have done in terms of prioritization, and then a recommendation on overall portfolio strategy: ‘Is this the right area to take risk, or not? Are these really the right issues we need to solve in the near term or longer term?’ ”
The Vice Chief, in turn, presents the recommendation to the Under Secretary, sometimes after several sessions with the staff. Generally, Markowitz said, when the Under Secretary approves a recom- mendation, it will go to the Chief of Staff for approval. Ultimately there may be a need to modify the requirement, initiate additional review, or pursue DoD sup- port to change the program.
A PRINCIPLED PROCESS Underpinning the CPR, and reinforced by the command environment, are a commitment
to the process, discipline,
accountability, questioning assumptions,
“If certain elements of requirements are driving costs to be unaffordable—which - ity—are you feeding that back to the requirements community to make sure there are good, cost-informed trades?” Markowitz said. “If this is really [a sys- tem’s] purpose in the broader context, can you make this thing cheaper? Can you provide it more widely across the Army at a better rate?”
A hypothetical alternative, he said, is to
“come back and say, ‘Because of the trans- portability requirement and this armor requirement, I can’t get to that cost. I understand how the overall portfolio is now becoming unaffordable, because
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Army AL&T Magazine
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