Paper and Presentation 1 of 2: Earned Capabilities Management: A New Approach to Agile Governance, Building on EVM Best Practices

Abstract: This presentation and paper focuses on the Program Executive/Sponsor stakeholder perspective. It brings together Agile concepts, EVM/project controls, and Capabilities-Based Planning to address the ultimate goals of the project….delivering value to the organization.

Currently, no popular methods exist to effectively track projects in terms of the return on investment (ROI) in dollars earned per dollar spent for projects with high levels of scope uncertainty. Traditional project management estimates project efficiency with EVM based on estimated effort to complete tasks within a defined scope. Agile management focuses on meeting the “definition of done” for evolving business requirements given time and cost constraints, but does not allow for a meaningful way to track efficiency or effectiveness.

Earned Capabilities Management (ECM):

Focuses leadership’s attention on changes in a project’s timely delivery of capabilities with positive ROI, independent of a project’s original scope,
Enables leadership to validate and verify Capability ROI during execution and aids in the decision-making process of determining when an Agile project is “done enough.”
Emphasizes fast delivery of capabilities while they are still useful to the enterprise to ensure positive Capability ROI.
Encourages rethinking the original scope to deliver cheaper alternatives, adjust for competing objectives, and discover novel solutions.
Defends and maximizes the return on organization budgets, by always tying the capability lifecycle back to achieving the mission and vision.

The presentation will focus on core concepts, as well as project definition, control, and scaling for integrated project management using Capability ROI as the principle project performance metric.

PMI Talent Triangle Skill: Technical Project Management

Paper and Presentation 2 of 2: Earned Capabilities Management (ECM) Meets FIRE – A Framework for Rapid Acquisition

Abstract: Earned Capabilities Management (ECM) is an alternative approach to managing the acquisition lifecycle that uses Agile concepts to emphasize fast delivery of working capabilities with high return on investment (ROI). It offers a framework for the whole acquisition lifecycle that puts the focus of projects back where it should be – impacting the mission and strategy of the organization. ECM builds on best practices from traditional program management that use cost-based methods (e.g. earned value management or “EVM”), and retools the processes to be value-driven and emphasize speed of delivery.

ECM is needed as the Federal Government and large businesses are entering a new era of rapidly changing requirements. The old models of acquisition of using Waterfall/Stage-Gate processes are slow and often deliver products too late or no longer a fit for the organization. Famous examples include the XM2001 (2001), Future Combat System (2009), and most recently the F-35.

In his book “FIRE: How Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant Methods Ignite Innovation” the author Dan Ward shows examples across eras of how agile acquisitions can enable higher portfolio success. With examples from WWII and recently from NASA, we can see how rapid acquisitions can build the first fighter jet in 142 days or land on a moving asteroid two billion miles away at two-thirds the cost to collect dust trail samples.

When ECM meets FIRE, the result is a new framework for Rapid Acquisition that could enable large organizations to confidently speed up capability development and achieve immediate mission success.

PMI Talent Triangle Skill: Strategic and Business Management

Biography: Mr. Johnson, serves as the Chief Technology Officer for Softek Enterprises LLC, a minority-owned small business providing technology solutions to government clients since 2007. Softek specializes in evolving business systems using Agile, DevOps, and Cloud technologies to deliver working solutions faster for the government’s most critical IT challenges. He has 10 years of project management, systems engineering, and advanced analytics experience. Mr. Johnson has led multiple award-winning Agile projects in civilian and defense agencies using Scrum and Disciplined Agile Delivery methods.