Delivering on the Promise

An organization responsible for a joint process established by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense that includes a single set of disability medical examinations and disability ratings for use by both departments.

Deliver on the promise of providing medical benefits for disabled Service Members fairly, accurately, and as quickly as possible. In one year, significantly improve the medical evaluation board process and cycle times at multiple sites with site-level workforces balanced to workload.

Building on over five years of implementation experience with the client, Herren applied a comprehensive process optimization approach to further reduce case backlog, balance future workforce requirements, and deliver results that reduced the transition period from the U.S. Departments of Defense to Veterans Affairs for service members and their families.

• Mapped site current process, performed takt time, and conducted comprehensive demand-based staffing analyses
• Standardized and streamlined the future state medical evaluation board process, for efficiency and legal compliance
• Deployed a site-level “rolling wave” – lessons learned between waves provided improvements to the standardized process and tools.
• Coached implementation stakeholders and monitored site performance to identify and address performance metrics, issues and defects

In 2015, a new unmanned systems organization was established within a U.S. defense agency to streamline investments and drive a deliberate and thoughtful strategy for unmanned systems technology development.

As adversarial state and non-state actors become more technologically sophisticated and more capable of conducting combined operations, defense officials recognized that it was critical to field unmanned and autonomous systems quickly and integrate them effectively. Over the past decade, government and industry have developed many new technologies for unmanned and autonomous systems to respond to asymmetric threats. Without a sound strategy in place, however, the department risked missing opportunities to capitalize on those technological advancements in support of the warfighter. To address this challenge, agency leaders sought Herren Associates’ expertise to facilitate strategy sessions, lead a series of workshops, and guide the development of a comprehensive roadmap.

To improve the agency’s ability to translate the strategy into action, the Herren team began by hosting planning sessions where agency leaders and subject matter experts met to discuss and define the future vision of unmanned and autonomous systems. Working closely with the client, the Herren team then facilitated a series of invitation-only workshops with subject matter experts across the unmanned and autonomous systems community. During these workshops, participants examined the deployment and operation of unmanned systems across the full range of military operations in an effective and efficient structure. Participants developed recommendations aligned with the unmanned systems organization’s key objectives, ranging from technology development challenges, to policy implementation complexities, to the cultural adoption of unmanned systems integration. Throughout the workshop process, Herren helped agency leaders identify key barriers to realizing their future vision for unmanned and autonomous systems and devise executable solutions to address those barriers.

Building on the workshops’ concepts, Herren assessed how to best translate the unmanned systems vision and its associated barriers. The team recommended next steps for tackling the barriers and outlined an actionable roadmap through 2030. The team then developed a strategy describing the steps the agency needed to take to achieve its desired outcomes and goals that clearly identified links among various priorities for action in the near, medium, and long term. Drawing on Herren’s extensive technology development experience, the team provided the agency with the context, information, and tools they needed to design, manage, and implement an effective roadmap specific to unmanned and autonomous systems

A Department of Defense (DoD) working-capital funded organization employs approximately 1,745 civilian engineers, scientists, technicians, and support personnel. The command has more than 100 laboratories and test sites focused on full-spectrum machinery systems support, commonality, and cybersecurity.

When the client evolved from a subordinate command to an independent division they needed to establish a new, independent IT infrastructure, execute a command-wide technology refresh project, migrate over a dozen management applications and terabytes of data, develop customized cybersecurity policies that conform to the DoD’s new Risk Management Framework (RMF) certification requirements, and attain Authorization to Operate (ATO) for more than 50 command information systems – all before the Inspector General (IG) conducted a command-wide inspection in 12 months.

To meet the complex array of requirements on such a short timeline, Herren Associates brought together a cross-functional team of cybersecurity subject matter experts (SMEs), policy executives, network security analysts, business/program analysts, and software engineers. Their mission was to ensure that the client would pass the IG inspection in one year’s time. To succeed in this undertaking, Herren drew on nearly 30 years of experience helping federal agencies make better decisions by delivering actionable, data-driven insights.

Herren’s team helped the client’s IT division streamline their processes to focus on outcomes, not outputs, and to adapt resources at hand to meet the command’s shifting priorities. IT Project Managers provided the expertise needed to manage an effort of this magnitude and complexity, ensuring all the technical and administrative tasks required to pass the IG inspection were completed on time. Policy executives and Cybersecurity SMEs drafted command-level policies and procedures, which included managing the review and approval process. Business and program analysts provided logistics support managing information technology procurement requests, system authorization access requests, and the command-wide technology refresh project. Program analysts provided analytic support to assess and track cybersecurity workforce certification requirements for the entire command. Herren network security engineers installed and configured servers, firewalls, routers, and other hardware devices, while the team’s software engineers developed a variety of management applications. Cybersecurity SMEs updated legacy Defense Information Assurance Certification and Approval Process (DIACAP) Certification and Accreditation (C&A) packages and developed RMF Assessment and Authorization (A&A) packages to meet ATO requirements.

A federal organization responsible for a portfolio of enterprise-wide information technology programs designed to enable common business processes and provide standard information technology capabilities to over 700,000 people.

To drive more efficient business operations across the enterprise, the client was preparing to jettison a multitude of out-of-date, single-purpose business systems that cost millions and replace them with a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) business management system. They needed to establish a program that would guide the process, helping them modernize and standardize financial, workforce, and supply chain management throughout the organization. The new system must also be able to produce auditable financial statements that complied with federal financial and security standards.

The Herren Associates team joined the effort in the pre-planning phase. Herren orchestrated the initial pilot system convergence; set up the program; and conducted ongoing planning, scheduling, monitoring, and control during all phases of deployment. As the program grew, Herren delivered a turnkey project management office (PMO) to enable the program to meet its challenging objectives.

Throughout the program’s initial acquisition stages, the Herren team led the development of all program materials. Herren drafted, reviewed, and prepared analyses and studies that led to a successful Milestone A/B approval, allowing the program to move forward. Working alongside program executives, Herren developed the all cost, economic analyses, affordability assessments, and program documentation required to successfully achieve Milestone C. The client immediately gained traction with an improved arsenal to draw upon – preparing them for anything from issue management with resource sponsors and Congressional inquiries to deliverable planning.

Herren’s PMO team gathered project management resources and expertise in one location, resulting in better alignment across program teams. Herren’s PMO facilitated clearer goals, faster execution, and improved success rates. During the course of development, Herren worked with a combined government-industry team to manage hundreds of business blueprint workshops, decompose thousands of product transaction workflow scenarios, and quantify the cost impact of application enhancements to the packaged ERP software system.

Because of Herren’s program management expertise, teams worked on an accelerated timeline that reduced overall time utilization by 17 percent from government forecasts. This immediately resulted in $2M in annual savings for the client. And looking forward, the program will realize additional savings by redeploying the project’s methodologies as the system successfully moves into sustainment.

One of the largest acquisition organizations within the U.S. Department of Defense, charged with managing the design and construction of a range of ships and craft for U.S. agencies as well as foreign military sales. The organization is responsible for multibillion-dollar programs that enable the United States to maintain the world’s most advanced forward naval presence, across any mission type, in both peacetime and wartime.

A shipbuilding program needed to improve processes and cut costs while fulfilling the complex requirements of transformational mission systems. Because of ongoing reductions in ship procurement quantity, the client was faced with the need to reduce costs significantly. The program’s complex systems did not readily lend themselves to cost analysis, but time was short. Program executives needed a way to cut through the details and arrive at the cost reduction initiatives improvements that would have a real impact on the bottom line. With a multibillion-dollar program on the line, the client trusted the Herren team to deliver actionable insights.

The Herren team worked together with the program office, suppliers, and government and industry subject matter experts (SMEs) to develop a should-cost position for the program’s multibillion-dollar combat and mission system proposal.