TWI PROFILES


TWI PROFILE: MAJ SCOTT SHAFFER, CISCO SYSTEMS INC.


A NEW LENS ON PROGRAM MANAGEMENT


Having served as an assistant product manager in Army elec- tronic warfare, MAJ Scott Shaffer was well aware that there was a lot more for him to learn about Army program management. So he set his sights on the Training with Industry (TWI) pro- gram and an assignment with Cisco Systems.


“I wanted an upper-level management experience while focusing on what I do in the Army, which is program management,” said Shaffer, who previously worked in Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors. But “program management” means a lot of things. “Industry defines ‘program manager’ differently from what the Army considers a program manager,” he said.


Shaffer wanted to look outside that Army box. He wanted to experience a broad range of industry managerial techniques and best business practices, while also gaining a better understanding


of the relationship between Cisco and the Army Acquisition Corps. So he applied for, and received, a TWI assignment at Cisco’s Herndon, VA, office. Shaffer’s work at Cisco centered on a program management office (PMO), where he participated in managing resources, schedules and performance for Cisco task orders. He also branched out from the PMO into other areas, such as budgeting and funding, corporate strategy and culture, forecasting investments, risk management and cybersecurity.


Te experience has been illuminating, not just for Shaffer but also for his Cisco host and co-workers.


“Probably the biggest thing [for me] is an out-of-box-thinking type of experience … usually I’m on the government side, [where we are] signing the contracts, providing the funding, saying this is how I want things done, and then industry responds. And the part that I wanted to take a little further … is how they [indus- try] manage it.”


Industry has a similar curiosity about the Army, said Jim Lien, who is responsible for Cisco’s TWI program in addition to all the service delivery that Cisco does for the Army. “Acquisition oftentimes seems like a mystery to the folks on the outside: What do we do? How do we do it? How do we do it better?”


AWARENESS COUNTS Shaffer found many similarities in program management prac- tices between the Army and Cisco, albeit each with its own standard operating procedures. And, not surprisingly, the true measure of success is satisfying the customer’s or Soldiers’ requirements, what Cisco accounts for in “customer satisfaction ratings.” Both organizations “are trying to build stuff for the customer and make them happy,” Shaffer said.


DUTY STATION


Both the work environment at Cisco Systems, with its array of highly mobile technology for getting the job done, and the organization itself, with sometimes indirect lines of responsibility, were notably different from what Shaffer is used to in the Army. But he observed many fundamental similarities in program management practices, along with a shared com- mitment to satisfying the customer’s or Soldiers’ requirements. (Photos by Maggie Shaffer, Cisco Systems Inc.)


Cisco as a whole, however, presented Shaffer with a different way of doing business than he was used to in the Army.


It wasn’t that everyone wore civilian clothes—he was used to that, having transitioned from the Signal Corps to the Acqui- sition Corps, in which working with Army civilians and contractors is the norm, not the exception. It was the fluidity of


148


Army AL&T Magazine


July–September 2014


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