Program objective memorandum dod ppbe

Candidate preferences are the decision of the Employer or Recruiting Agent, and are controlled by them alone. Company: MDW Associates. We provide Federal government clients with consulting, management services, advisory and assistance services, decision support, strategic planning, process planning and improvement, task execution and metrics analysis. Our mission is to make our clients more successful by providing honest assessments, exceptional analysis, prudent advice, direct communication, and hard work.

PPBE decisions are often made through mediums like spreadsheets, which are difficult to collaborate on, aggregate, or even just keep updated in the most basic ways. This makes them hard to reuse and incredibly inefficient. Decision Lens brings clarity to this otherwise frustrating process. By giving definition to the process, and including elements of collaboration and discussion, as well as the analytic side of decision making, Decision Lens helps one make the best decision quickly in a way that inspires confidence in the results.

Decision Lens portfolios can also be reused and modified year after year to capture what worked before, yet be flexible enough to be updated with new information.

Decision Lens shows which alternatives best align with what priorities, and why those priorities are weighted the way that they are.

The reasoning behind every decision is incredibly clear, making choices easy to both understand and justify. The collaborative and transparent process reduces risk, allowing for data-driven decisions that can be made with confidence and clarity. It also makes justifying choices easy by making clear the benefits of the chosen alternatives. Request a Demo today! June 3, by Amber Larkins. What is PPBE? What are the phases of the PPBE cycle?

This includes providing recommendations on whether to continue, change or end IT investments. Aligning Interests It is extremely difficult to collectively, across any enterprise, agree on priorities that get beyond the needs of individual, siloed organizations. Add too many people invested in the current system, and it becomes a recipe for perpetuating the status quo. Pour in an overabundance of people with innovative private sector experience, and the solutions will turn out to be wholly unworkable in the Pentagon.

It will be crucial that the commissioners are free enough of political constraints to be able to discuss the real issues and obstacles that plague the system. Frankly, it would be fruitful to have a mix of individuals who no longer have any ambition of working inside the department with some who still have that desire. Optimally, members will be appointed with experience in different portions of PPBE and different parts of the defense enterprise.

Someone who worked with budget execution at the service level will have a substantially different perspective from someone who worked with planning at the secretary of defense level.

The supporting staff will be equally important. At the end of the day, America requires a capable military that operates with the necessary agility under sufficient oversight. John Hyten, the recently retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, consistently spoke about the need to increase the speed in which the Department of Defense develops and adopts new technologies.

On both these occasions, it should present actionable recommendations which can be directly incorporated in versions of the National Defense Authorization Act. These will be the windows of opportunity for action that need to be taken full advantage of. Further, Congress and the commission should be willing to try out pilot programs and learn from previous experiments, such as the experiences of the Defense Innovation Unit and the different software factories.

In determining best practices, it would be useful for there to be variance in the processes used by the different services or defense agencies. Similarly, PPBE processes do not need to be the same for all fiscal accounts. For example, military construction and personnel could use different processes.

The important element is to keep the common reporting threads that tie it all to the Office of Secretary of Defense and Congressional overseers. The Department of Defense cannot change its ways overnight, no matter how artful the recommendations developed by the commission. However, done correctly, the PPBE Reform Commission can place the department on the road to necessary changes to the underlying resource management culture and the oversight relationship between Congress and the department.

The commission represents the best opportunity in a decade for the Pentagon to improve its resourcing processes and regain the agility needed to compete effectively on the world stage. Thomas Spoehr, a retired U. Image: U. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Spc. Thomas Spoehr and Frederico Bartels. Main Criticisms of the Process PPBE deserves some criticism for being a linear and sequential process with phases that are dependent on one another. Principles for the Commission For maximum efficiency, the congressionally established PPBE Reform Commission should guide its work using five principles: properly scope the problem before jumping to fixes, recognize they are working on a system that undergirds the daily defense of the country, establish specific targets, select the right commissioners and staff, and focus on the end goal — a capable, agile military with adequate oversight.

Scope the Problem The PPBE process has many functions and serves many differing needs, from planning hardware procurement quantities in to tracking fiscal execution rates for the current fiscal year. Be Specific and Realistic with Its Targets The legislation creating the commission is perhaps necessarily vague about which problem s it is supposed to solve. Stakeholders need to communicate solid analysis and logic for their positions to have confidence in their chances for success at each new phase.

Failure to understand and communicate effectively can frequently lead to misunderstandings or disappointment in working relationships between stakeholders. Stakeholders must have routine, ongoing communication and interactions with other stakeholders within their chain of command, across their organization, with key external stakeholders, and at multiple levels of the organization. To have timely influence on an issue or decision often requires deliberate participation in stakeholder processes.

Taking care of these relationships should significantly influence leadership prioritization of how they spend their day, what work is important, and what work not to do. Protecting stakeholder relationships should be highest priority for work-plan development and workforce management decisions. The POM process was designed to create tension among stakeholders and help changing in current and future military capability and capacity be incremental rather than revolutionary.

Set realistic goals that are somewhere between inconsequential and revolutionary to help set priorities and scale POM activities appropriately. You must align with leadership objectives rather than focusing on protecting your own equities. There is a time and place to influence corporate positions, and it is early in the process. Treat everything that your chief of operations says or publishes as guidance to follow.

Sometimes guidance is ambiguous or inconsistent, and sometimes parts of the chain of command may follow a different path. However, a stakeholder should follow the guidance given, and have a plan if top leadership has made clear what he or she wants, but the chain of command takes a different route. Stakeholders who fail to follow organizational guidance should expect changes to their POM submissions. In some cases, there may be reasons to not follow guidance or to choose one source over another.

However, you should always coordinate with leadership. When you deviate from guidance, you may have to prepare two versions of the POM database. One would be aligned with the advocated guidance and the other would need to be ready to use if the submission is rejected and compliance is directed. When sponsors fail to have this hedge position prepared, they are handing their voice to integrators who in a short time frame must make the affected programs match with guidance and balance the programs as directed by leadership.

Senior leaders must make trade-offs between or across programs and cannot signal decisions before the right time. Do not expect to learn the outcome during an executive briefing, and do not try to infer what the outcome will be based on how well your presentation was received. You should also understand who the decision-makers are and how they operate, including what kinds of presentations they like, the content they expect, and the other stakeholders from whom they typically ask advice.

Usually when there is a disconnect between the presentation and the outcome is when guidance is not followed. Leadership must know the consequences of what has been presented and may not be aware until they see the numbers. It is important to establish and maintain transparency throughout the POM process. However, surprises can still happen when two stakeholders interpret decisions or guidance differently. Here are some best practices in avoiding surprises:.

Avoiding surprises requires communication, coordination, and collaboration within a chain of command to make sure everyone knows who is responsible for a program or phase. Decision Lens has been working with Federal customers on challenges for over 15 years. We provide a unique capability that enables large organizations to create a clear organizing construct for their decision-making processes. We help leaders and subject matter experts offer their judgements on the fundamental elements of the decision.

Our software has capabilities that help organizations balance their resources when they must make difficult investment decisions. Decision Lens helps organizations free up more time and resources through automation and smart analytics that suggest probable solutions and scenarios.

Decision lens helps to communicate how well alternatives match strategic goals and shows how to gain the most value in funding allocation.