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:
- IT Executives must continuously drive Innovation*, Efficiency, and Security
- 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:
- Bring the “Idea to Life” early in process
- Mature, Validate, and Refine before building
- Low fidelity prototypes built early to show ideas
- Rapid iteration and refinement before coding
- Visualization accelerates construction
- Communication vehicle for idea generator
- Construction team builds the right solution
- Visualization also accelerates adoption
- Users provide feedback and suggestions on new ideas
- 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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