The iRise Blog

I wrote a blog post in April about my thoughts on Innovation, the Federal Government and iRise.  In response to the post, I received a comment this week asking about the correlation between CMMI ACQ and iRise and decided that the best way to answer would be in a new blog post.

First, some background information for the uninitiated.  CMMI for ACQ (acquisition) is a Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) model designed for use in managing a supply chain by those who acquire, procure, or otherwise select and purchase products and services for business purposes.  General Motors is partnering with Software Engineering Institute on developing this model and more on CMMI ACQ can be found from the Software Engineering Institute website.

Interestingly, this question also came up at the Government Executive Roundtable that iRise hosted on May 9th.  A panel of representatives from aerospace/defense, government, academia, and manufacturing came together to have a conversation about innovation.  One of the key questions was how could large complex teams (spanning many time zones, buildings, functional silos, government regulations, contractual terms, and the diversity and richness of human culture and textual / spoken words) do a better job of buying (acquiring) and making (building, extending, integrating, customizing, implementing) software to address massively complex “running the business of the government” capabilities for this new century.  Especially where bureaucracy is dead and the network take its place?

At the highest level, Keith Glennan, CTO of Northrop Grumman IT Solutions spoke about demands for the “next generation enterprise”.  “Agile and engaged talent” and “enterprise operational  velocity” combined with a “distinct customer experience” are needed to address mega trends such as emerging virtual economies, geo politics, economics, demographics, environment, and developing markets.

Keith also pointed out that, “Simulation and Analytics”, “Social Networking & Collaboration” and “Continuous Strategy” were three of the “Top 5″ IT Enabling Strategies. More specifically he shared some thoughts around communicates of practices, virtual worlds, and Wiki.  His concluding point was: “Innovation is defined as an organization’s ability to creatively combine new and existing technologies, processes and organizational capabilities to form unique or even disruptive solutions that add differentiating value to the business.” 

Finally, Keith talked about the need to “do more with less” and “to make a difference”.  iRise enables companies to see or discover how to accomplish this and then to build something that gets it done.

This discussion set the stage for Rich Frost from General Motors to then talk about “making innovation happen” including the broad spectrum from “generating ideas”  to “constructing a solution” to a “solution that customers use”  on a global basis.  Why GM and what’s the connection with government?  Like the Federal government, GMs has outsourced all all needs for IT services and software, for decades.  Are there an lessons to be learned there?  Most definitely as GM is collaborating with the SEI at Carnegie Mellon, with the DoD and NASA for “Acquisition”.

Rich’s opening comments summarized the GM mission for IT very well and puts ACQ into perspective:

1. IT Executives must continuously drive Innovation*, Efficiency, and Security
2. IT Executives must consciously balance their internal staff and supplier sourcing

GM drives innovation and performance with:

• Integrated processes based on CMMI-ACQ
• Incremental Delivery Lifecycle
• Visualization

Rich mentioned that 75% of every IT dollar spend within government and the commercial world is spent on Acquisition, but that CMMI focused on the developer and development, not the customer and outcomes.  “Requirements” were identified as the key element for success along with architecture, project management, and “supplier alignment”.  Rich also talked about how visualizing capabilities with stakeholders is a key enabler and how visualization drives “ethical” partnerships with suppliers.

He also correlated iRise visualization with CMMI-ACQ at GM with these 10 points:

1. Bring the “Idea to Life” early in process
2. Mature, Validate, and Refine before building
3. Low fidelity prototypes built early to show ideas
4. Rapid iteration and refinement before coding
5. Visualization accelerates construction
6. Communication vehicle for idea generator
7. Construction team builds the right solution
8. Visualization also accelerates adoption
9. Users provide feedback and suggestions on new ideas
10. Users know about new innovations and feel buy-in

The bottom line correlation between CMMI-ACQ and iRise is VISUALIZE TO MODERNIZE and SIMULATE TO INNOVATE.

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The Standish Group  and others have reported over the past decade that more than 30% of all software made for users was, in hindsight, never needed or used to accomplish their mission. The project stakeholders discovered this only after the solutions were delivered at more than several thousand projects surveyed to date. Also reported widely, more than 20% of the code related to functionality and/or usability was found to be “missing” or “wrong” after the users had a chance to interact with the software in real-world mission scenarios. In the survey responses, the terms requirements “reworked” and “moved to the next release” are used interchangeable with the terms “missed”, “misunderstood”, and “changed.”

The Federal IT Budget - With the Standish statistics in mind, more than $10 billion dollars of the $70 billion dollar federal IT budget this year is earmarked for software modernization efforts. Most American citizens and government employees know these efforts are long overdue. The opportunity exists to reduce this expenditure by more than 10% or alternatively to get more for the taxpayer dollars invested on projects already in flight. There is a rapidly increasing “expectations gap” by users and acquirers alike as to what “good software” means for individuals and organizations to take care of business and fulfill assigned missions, tasks and goals.

The Government Needs To Innovate - Michael Schrage, a senior adviser to MIT’s Security Studies Programwrites, “Innovation’ isn’t what innovators do….it’s what customers and clients adopt. His research and advisory work explores the role of models, prototypes and simulations as collaborative media for managing innovation and risk. His ongoing work on strategic and “just-in-time” experimentation is at the core of several corporate transformation efforts. His insights into the economics of “hyperinnovation,” “‘iterative capital” and “innovation cross-subsidies” are redefining executive investment criteria for supply chain and customer relationship initiatives.” He is the author of Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate.  In the forward provided by Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence; Tom writes, “this is simply the best book written on innovation I’ve ever read.” …. “Read! Act! Now!”, he concludes.

Robert Austin, Harvard Chair of the CIO Executive Program focuses on management of innovative and knowledge intensive activities, especially as applied in creative industries and information technology management. He has written on these issues in Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work (co-authored with Lee Devin) and The Role of IT in Innovation-Based Value Creation; where Rob writes, “it will soon be all too apparent. IT, finally mature enough to think of itself as an old dog, very badly needs a new trick.”

Partnering With The Government - Richard Frost is a Global Director at General Motors where he has responsibility for driving systems development, software engineering, and program management globally, including agile development, streamlined development processes, and requirements visualization. As a senior advisor to the SEI CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ), a collaborative effort of GM, DoD and NASA, Rich has helped identify best practices for systems acquisition at GM and is helping  incorporate these into a CMMI framework for the customers of technology.

Through innovation and partnerships like GM’s collaboration with SEI, iRise’s expansion into the Federal Market announced last month is tasked with saving the Federal Government a “fistful of cash” and helping accelerate the software modernization efforts over the next several years.

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