Welcome to a PMO for the 21st century: today's PMO organizational structure is destined to change-dramatically - Organizational Excellence - Brief Article

Program Manager, March, 2002 by Michael Smith

MAJ. MICHAEL "JOHN" SMITH

This article reviews issues affecting the future U.S. Air Force acquisition workforce relating to trends in manpower availability, skills required, budgetary constraints, and increasing cooperation between government-industry. Looking forward, it describes my conception of a future system Program Management Office (PMO) operating environment based on the government's core competencies that provide value-added involvement.

Written while a student in the Advanced Program Management Course (APMC) at the Defense Acquisition University my goal was, and still is to determine the most effective and efficient means to organize a PMO and field the best weapon system performance for our warfighters, while simultaneously reducing cost and schedule.

Finding the "Value-Added"

Since the mid-1980s, DoD has focused on increasing the professionalism of the acquisition workforce. These efforts have included, among other activities, the passage of the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act; the establishment of the Defense Acquisition University (DAU); expanded training opportunities through the DAU consortium schools; and, since publication of OSD's Future Acquisition and Technology Workforce in April 2000, the issuance of a Continuous Learning Policy Also included in that policy were future acquisition and technology global trends typical of the following:

* Smaller, aging workforce

* Core skills still required, but growing emphasis on personnel with understanding of multiple functions and generalists with strong business skills

* Lean budgets driving consolidation, competitive sourcing, and activity-based costing

* Operating in an integrated digital environment

* Seamless government-industry partnerships/teamings.

Currently, the Air Force has only 65 percent mid-senior acquisition personnel available to manage the vast number of weapon system programs. When factoring demographics, the trend further deteriorates. Beginning in 2004, as a result of separations and retirements, program manager career fields are projected to experience cumulative losses ranging from 35 to 50 percent. With the drive to "do more with less," the hard-hitting question (with which the corporate world has already come to grips) must be asked: "What are government program office core competencies, or those skills that cannot be more efficiently and effectively conducted in the private sector; more directly, what "value-added" does a program office provide?

The reader may be surprised at the conclusions, for they challenge the very way in which today's DoD is organized and operates.

Envision a PMO consisting of only three people who comprise the core government team: a program "monitor" who facilitates the contractor's earned value status to OSD and provides a liaison to help warfighters and industry communicate; a contracting officer to manage the contract terms; and a resource manager to provide budget obligation/expenditure information to OSD and provide budgetary submissions for the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) process.

This team would be geographically dispersed, interfacing internally and also with the contractor via the Internet and videophone capabilities, with minimal face-to-face contact, limited primarily to dealing with classified issues.

We Can't Get There From Here

Prior to conducting research for this article, my feelings toward the future acquisition workforce could be summed up in a brief statement: "We can't get there from here." My research confirmed my beliefs and provided statistical evidence, along with some isolated cases where acquisition managers had already made many sweeping changes by simply asking the question, "What is our [government program office] value-added in this scenario as far as configuration management, logistics, systems engineering, test and evaluation, data management, etc.?"

The answer oftentimes was, other than introducing a lot of risk to the government, there was no real value-added in having a government overseer developing/integrating the functional aspects of a program.

Total System Performance Responsibility

The Air Force took dramatic steps in the mid-1990s, introducing the concept of Total System Performance Responsibility (TSPR), even though the concept has not flushed out very quickly nor is it yet very well understood at the implementation level of the PMOs. Quite understandably, program managers have not yet fully begun to operate outside the normal "overseer with a whip" paradigm drilled into their professional education and training backgrounds prior to TSPR.

Today, program managers who continuously ask the question, "What value do we add to this process?" and are truthful with answering that question, are the ones who are defining/embracing TSPR. The question, admittedly is difficult to ask because it requires bureaucratic agencies--which often perform best to perpetuate their existence-- to question the very reason for their existence.

The pervading mentality seems to be, "I'm a government engineer, with an engineering degree ... therefore I must go forth and engineer something ...."