Fwd: How the Air Force's ECSS went wrong - FierceGovernmentIT

[John Scott III]

the pdf in the article is interesting
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http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/how-air-forces-ecss-went-wrong/2013-11-21?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

How the Air Force's ECSS went wrong

November 21, 2013 | By David Perera
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An official review of what went wrong with the Air Force's canceled Expeditionary Combat Support System enterprise resourcing planning effort found problems including a failure of the Air Force to understand its own data, no clear picture on exactly how many legacy systems ECSS was meant to replace, and a confused governance structure.

The Air Force in November 2012 canceled the ERP after spending $1.03 billion on it, stating that the program "is no longer a viable option" for meeting the fiscal 2017 congressional deadline for full audit readiness. ECSS, an Oracle supply chain management ERP originally meant to replace at least 240 legacy logistics and financial systems, was to have achieved full deployment of its first increment across the service in October 2013. Service officials estimate they would have to spend an additional $1.1 billion in order to achieve just a quarter of the planned functionality--and that even then, the system wouldn't be ready until 2020.

The review, the executive summary (.pdf) of which the Senate Armed Services Committee is making public, identified six root causes pertaining heavily to software project management.

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"All of the data must be understood, not just the data we thought we had, and not just the data we wanted to address, but all of it," the executive summary states. The review team faults the service for attempting to concurrently map out its current environment and future system processes and build the ERP. Understanding the data "needs to be done first," the summary says.

The Air Force also didn't have clear pictures of its legacy systems environment, nor of the future architecture it was attempting to build, and it lacked a transition plan for getting from the legacy to the future state.

Even if it had a transition plan, however, the Air Force "lacked a way to property execute it." The Air Force wanted a single software package to handle all ECSS functions, but it knew from the onset that no single, stand-alone product would satisfy its requirements. As a result, it initially pursued a strategy of integrating additional software into the ERP--"but there existed no follow through on exactly how ECSS would achieve the 'To-Be' utilizing a software product requiring bolt-ons that increased the number of interfaces."

It also says the ERP was developed in an unrealistic environment--one that didn't mirror the operational environment--and that the Air Force lacked a universal agreement on the vision for ECSS and that workers lacked assurance that their concerns for matters such as continued employment would be taken into account.

The team lists "a confusing and, at times, ineffectual governance structure" as a contributing cause. The program started out being governed under the 5000 series methodology as a major automated information system, but elements of other methodologies--the Business Capability Lifecycle and Service Development and Delivery Process--were also used at different times or in combination.

"There lacked coherent leadership guidance and coordination from process 'owners' on how to seamlessly mesh and implement the intermingled methodologies, thereby driving needless delay, frustration, uncertainty, and labor burden on the program office."

The governance problem, the summary states "is not yet resolved."

For more:
- download the executive summary of the ECSS review team final report (.pdf)



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-----------------------------------------------------------
John Scott
RadiantBlue Technologies, Inc. (Virginia)
240.401.6574
jsc...@radiantblue.com
< jms...@gmail.com >

Have you joined MIL-OSS:
http://groups.google.com/group/mil-oss
http://mil-oss.org/

[Brian A]

PDF was definitely interesting, especially the ending:

The Acquisition Incident Review Team doesn’t want to leave the reader with a completely bleak outlook. Much of the work that was done on the Expeditionary Combat Support System effort can be reused. The progress made on legacy deconstruction and the spinups to blueprinting can be the basis for the data work ahead. While reluctant to put a percentage on potential reuse, the Acquisition Incident Review Team suspects reusable data will be more than people think. Expeditionary Combat Support System wasn’t the failure people think it was; it was the first step to truly understanding the enormous task the Air Force has ahead of itself.

Couldn't say the highlighted bold part any better :-)