Program managers need the right mix of character and action to build a foundation of trust.
by Col. Joel D. Babbitt
Credibility gives authority and brings trust; it is the reward of good decisions, the product of consistent results and the currency that every leader deals in. If a program manager (PM) has credibility, people trust them to do what they say and then give the time, resources and the leadership support to do it. The opposite is also true. Indeed, as now-retired Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal noted, “Credibility equals freedom of action.”
Credibility is especially key in the world of acquisition, where trust equals money, and a breach of trust can send an effort spiraling into a morass of bureaucratic red tape. Once a PM establishes credibility, oversight and controls will begin to loosen. The PM will begin breezing through potentially contentious briefings, will get calls in September at the end of the fiscal year asking if the PM can use a few million residual dollars, and overall more work will flow in their direction. These are just some of the positive effects of credibility. So how does a PM establish and maintain credibility? It’s a mix of character and action. When building your project plan, some actions produce far more credibility than others.
ACCURACY IS FINAL
A credible PM must deliver what the user needs.
Wyatt Earp once said, “Fast is fine, but accuracy is final.” In other words, it’s great to be fast, but if you do not hit the target, speed doesn’t matter. Applied to acquisition, that means that the PM must build the right thing, and building the right thing is not as easy as it sounds—it takes the ability to see what right is (vision), then adjust to get it right (execution).
Are your users complaining about the size of the vehicle your system is mounted on? Then change it. Is your system too complex for the average 19-year-old recruit? Then do the no-kidding hard work of simplifying it. Are your users leaving your system in the conex, or shipping container, because it’s too big and bulky? Then get innovative and shrink it. Is your material solution, or product, outdated, or maybe your users are buying something better off the shelf and turning your stuff in? Then it’s time to change your material solution. There are many structures in Army bureaucracy that are meant to make change difficult, but it can be done. In the end, it’s better for the Soldier, for the taxpayer and for your credibility to make the hard right choice than the easy wrong choice.
BACKYARD TESTING
To be a credible PM, you have to pass your tests.
Seth Smith, a retired warrant officer, once said, “Don’t ever try anything in your front yard that you haven’t tried in your backyard twice.” In other words, to avoid unpleasant surprises in their public demonstrations and record tests, be sure to vet the capability thoroughly. In general, if your product is made for Soldiers by a lab full of engineers, you can expect that it will not survive first contact with a unit of Soldiers. So, it’s important to set up a number of informal events (backyard events) where Soldiers get to test the new capability before going to a record or otherwise high-visibility test event (front yard event).
START SMALL
The author, right, and a communications sergeant from 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division discuss updates to the Warfighter Information Network – Tactical Increment 1 during NIE 15.2 on Fort Bliss, Texas, in May 2015. A PM can improve the odds of success—and his credibility—by testing new systems on a smaller scale before taking part in larger, higher-profile demonstrations. (Photo Credit: Amy Walker, PEO C3T)
After completing extensive lab testing and in preparation for a very high-visibility network integration evaluation (NIE) demonstration event, the Warfighter Information Network -Tactical Increment 1 Product Office set up a number of backyard test events with the Delaware Army National Guard’s 198th Expeditionary Signal Battalion and invited vendors along. Secure Wi-Fi for command posts, tactical microwave radios, 4G tactical cellular infrastructure and other components were put through their paces. The feedback that guard Soldiers gave helped the vendor tweak its product and helped the product office tweak the manuals and employment concepts. Overall, these backyard events were key to these products’ subsequent success at NIE.
Combat Soldiers, from standard infantry up to special forces, do not just roll up and start shooting at the enemy. Rather, they do rock, or rehearsal-of-concept, drills, rehearsals and practice actions on the objective before taking direct action on an enemy objective. Treat your tests the same way; they are no-fail events. Follow their lead and test before the test. Your users will thank you and your credibility will increase.
ZEROING IN FOR THE WIN
Back shop efforts, studies and prototyping.
Every program office should have a number of back shop efforts ongoing. These are the things that your engineers play and tinker with; things like vendor-provided equipment acquired via purchase or no-cost loan agreements and things from other services or program offices that might meet a need in your program office. You should have a bench of back shop efforts; it shows that your engineers are curious enough to guide your program past the potential dead ends and to the right solution. Also, if you have a bench of back shop efforts churning along, you will capture the intellectual high ground in meetings with your customers and suppliers. You will not end up just going with whatever the vendors or your requirements people tell you. You will have credibility.
Studies are the secret weapon of the credible PM. They are the ultimate way for the PM to capture the intellectual high ground in their industry or area of expertise and carry a huge amount of credibility with them. Commissioning a study shows that a PM has the foresight to bring in an expert to examine the alternatives and to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each potential course of action. In short, doing a study means you did your homework. Very few things will zero you in for the win like a righteous study.
Prototyping is about a lot more than just trying out different potential solutions. Building prototypes actually does a number of things for the PM. The word “prototype” lowers everyone’s expectations, so if it flops, no harm, no foul—it was just a prototype. However, if it’s a home run, a prototype gives the PM a jump on production. Additionally, prototyping also gives the PM office time to get a jump start on the paperwork required to field and to eventually get to a full materiel release.
Also, doing more than one or two prototypes gives the vendor the opportunity to shake out the production process. Finally, prototyping allows the PM to declare the core of the product as solid, while working through the little details to reach a production model. It’s the ultimate soft start before Milestone C and low-rate initial production.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) needed to put high bandwidth communications for passengers on U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft. The prevailing wisdom was to add more international maritime satellite (INMARSAT) channels on the plane. Rather than charging forward with an INMARSAT upgrade, however, the J-6 (communications directorate) acquisition and technical leads conducted a network study. During the course of that study, they determined that more INMARSAT was a dead end. That was because INMARSAT satellites, for the foreseeable future, could not support the number of channels needed.
UNRISKY BUSINESS
When the U.S. Special Operations Command wanted to improve communications equipment on C-17 aircraft, they followed the path outlined here, including prototyping, proofing and vendor visits. Risk declined with each step toward full rate production. (Image courtesy of the author and U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center)
After laying out all the options, they determined the solution was to install a Ku-band high-bandwidth antenna on a number of C-17s. Not an easy task, but by doing the network study up front, the J-6 had a plan for an appropriate network it could use—one that has proven to be the right solution for the better part of a decade.
The J-6 technical lead had been putting other antennas on smaller aircraft for some time, but to get it right, a request for information, several vendor visits and an antenna study were used. Through this process they discovered the only viable solution that was also sufficiently low-risk. There were many opportunities to pick an answer that looked right before finding the ultimate solution, but after closer inspection they would have cost far more and taken far longer than the budget allowed.
BEGIN BOX RISK=COST
It’s important to understand that risk equals cost. Failure to wring out risk before launching a project will show in the costs. Why is that? Because unknowns have to be planned for, and unknowns are expensive. The more variables a contractor must build into its budget, the higher the overall cost will be. Risk increases cost exponentially.
END BOX
After the network study and the antenna study, when the J-6 acquisition lead approached the Air Force program office about it, the estimate was six years and more than $50 million to modify 15 aircraft. Why? The answer was in the project framing. The proposed program structure from the Air Force program office was to hire a prime contractor, go through a traditional engineering and manufacturing development phase, then enter production. This left all the risk in the initial project plan, even after two studies. The J-6 counterproposal was to work out the risk by taking it one step at a time. First, an antenna placement study to determine where on the aircraft the antenna should be located to minimize technical risk and, therefore, cost. Second, a prototype effort that modified three aircraft. Third, a kit-proof effort, which is the Air Force equivalent of low-rate initial production. Finally, the full production run. The approach was most aptly summed up by the deputy J-6 as “going slow to go fast.”
The cost of the first planes modified under the prototype effort were $2.5 million each. The cost of the kit-proof modifications were $2 million each. That brought the cost of the production run down to $1.2 million per plane. By breaking the effort down into three phases, reducing the risk as the effort progressed, the cost of the production run was cut in half. In the end, the original estimate of six years and $50 million-plus was reduced to three years and just under $25 million. Effectively, both the budget and schedule were cut in half. The users were happy with their new capability, and the Army leveraged the USSOCOM effort to produce its Enroute Mission Command Capability for the XVIII Airborne Corps’ Global Response Force.
ADDING BANDWIDTH
Paul Goetz, an electrician at Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, holds a guy line as communications equipment is positioned on a Wideband Enterprise Terminal at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, one of more than 80 joint systems used worldwide. A plan to add bandwidth to joint systems adopted a “go slow to go fast” approach that saved money and reduced risk. (Photo by Jacqueline Boucher, Tobyhanna Army Depot)
CONCLUSION
Credibility cannot be built overnight, although it certainly may be lost with such speed. A successful foundation of credibility requires building trust—trust built by consistently producing what you said you would produce, in the time you said you would do it and within the budget you were given. Cost, performance, schedule: It’s more than a mantra, it’s your path to credibility.
For more information, read “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling, or contact the author at 703-806-0583 or joel.d.babbitt.mil@mail.mil.
COL. JOEL D. BABBITT is the product lead for Wideband Enterprise Satellite Systems within the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He previously served as the product manager for Warfighter Information Network – Tactical Increment 1 and the product manager for command, control, communications, computing and intelligence for a unit under the U.S. Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from the Naval Postgraduate School and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Brigham Young University, and is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College in Fort Lee, Virginia, and Austin, Texas. He is Level III certified in program management and Level II certified in engineering and in information technology. He holds Project Management Professional certification and is a member of the Army Space Cadre and the Army Acquisition Corps.
This article is scheduled to be published in the July-September 2017 issue of Army AL&T Magazine.
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