IT Portfolio Management Whitepaper FINAL

Introduction
In this paper, Tactical Edge will bridge the gap
between standard Information Technology (IT)
Portfolio Management (IT PfM) processes, insights,
and capabilities and apply these to the area of
Research and Development. Often the task of
managing Research and Development (R&D) efforts
is seen as wholly separate from broader IT PfM
efforts, which are generally more aligned with
production IT system management and support. We
believe that many of these same tools and techniques
may be used within R&D organizations to improve
results, reduce costs, and improve collaboration
between efforts. In many organizations, R&D
projects operate autonomously and only when an
effort is close to transition is it viewed as a part of a
larger portfolio. Within this paper, Tactical Edge will
demonstrate that R&D project oversight and
management, when using the proper tools, will
improve efforts across the board and provide direct
returns for the entire R&D portfolio.
The Challenge with R&D
IT alone has never been responsible for a successful
government agency, but it can be an enabler which
allows an agency to thrive. When aligned properly,
IT supports the underlying business mission, and
allows employees to perform their jobs faster and
with greater accuracy and efficiency. Managing an
organization’s IT at an Enterprise level is known as
IT PfM.
In the book IT Portfolio Management Step by Step:
Unlocking the Business Value of Technology, authors
Bryan Maizlish and Robert Handler note that“[t]he
goal of an IT portfolio is to deliver measurable
business value—tangible and intangible—while
aligning and improving the business and IT strategy”
(Maizlish & Handler, 2010). But as an organization’s
direction changes, newer technologies come to
market, and older technologies lose support, the
organization needs to reevaluate its IT portfolio to
prevent stagnation and unnecessary costs. An active
R&D portfolio can be used as a tool to defend against
both.
While the DoD has historically invested in R&D, the
challenge has been in aligning internal research
initiatives across the organization with the direction
Author
Steve Palmer, Director, East Coast Operations
Megan Gerstenfeld, Senior Systems Engineer
Optimizing your
Research and
Development Platform
The Benefits a Formalizing your
Organization’s Research Pipeline
Contents
Introduction...........................................................................1
The Challenge with R&D....................................................1
Solution:....................................................................................2
Lifecycle Management...................................................2
Oversight and Execution ..............................................3
Expanded Capabilities...................................................4
Conclusion:..............................................................................4
References:..............................................................................4

A Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business
Copyright ©2015 Tactical Edge, Inc. | All Rights Reserved 2
set by senior leadership. As a result, funding is often
wasted because of a variety of reasons, including:
1. The DoD continues to fund the wrong projects;
investing in projects that are underperforming or
proven to be economically unfeasible, while
preventing efforts that are providing positive
Return on Investment (ROI) from obtaining the
funding they require
2. The DoD reinvests in R&D that had previously
been attempted, and failed, without accounting
for the lessons learned, or
3. Multiple stakeholders with different priorities
and agendas pulling a program in multiple
directions, instead of identifying a single, well
defined objective.
4. Multiple stakeholders attacking similar problems
using unique funding streams, causing the
government to spend more money to obtain
similar capabilities.
5. Failure to identify a transition home up front,
keeping successful efforts out of the hands of the
government personnel and soldiers who initially
spawned the R&D project.
Adopting an enterprise-level portfolio management
approach helps to mitigate and manage those risks.
This white paper details Tactical Edge’s proposal for
how Naval Facilities Engineering Command
(NAVFAC) Expeditionary Warfare Center (EXWC)
can leverage an enterprise-focused plan, and tailor it
to fit the organization’s needs. In doing so, this will
ensure that projects are managed objectively and
comprehensively, and that solutions providing a
viable and justifiable path to value are prioritized in
spending and other organizational efforts.
Solution:
Lifecycle Management
To address the underlying issues identified above
requires an IT PfM plan that standardizes the
information required to start an R&D project, and
provides a set of common metrics that would allow
leadership to compare and prioritize various types of
IT efforts. The formalized IT PfM process would
enable senior leaders to focus their investment in
high priority projects that align with leadership’s
direction, which is identified as business value in
Figure 1 below.
Pulled from the book IT Portfolio Management Step-
by-Step, Figure 1 shows how if programs could be
compiled down to a set of standardized metrics, they
could then be plotted and compared to each other on
a graph. Any programs that would rate low enough
on the Risk scale (y-axis), but high enough on the
Business Value scale (x-axis), would then be a
candidate for funding. The Risk/Reward
Relationship line denotes the breakeven line below,
with emphasis being given to projects that fall into
the “Perform” quadrant. Given the transformational
goals of R&D, the Risk/Reward relationship may be
may be more steeply sloped, representing
investments that deliver higher business value in
exchange for the acceptance of more risk.
Projects that are selected then begin the formalized
PfM process. This process is made up of milestones
and gateways requiring each milestone to be met
before proceeding through the next gateway. The
milestones ensure that metrics can be captured for
comparison purposes, as well as to ensure that
progress is adequately tracked and communicated to
the appropriate stakeholders. Forcing projects to
meet similar milestones provides senior leaders with
the ability to track the progress of disparate projects,
and compare that progress against each other.
This could be beneficial for SBIR Phase I and Phase
II reviews, as officers within the Department of
Defense often must compare projects across various
subject areas for funding considerations, where the
comparisons are not always obvious.
Figure 1: IT Investment Analysis

As milestones are completed, projects can move
between gateways. The gateways are designed to
prevent progress until all preconditions are met, and
forces senior leadership to acknowledge and
communicate the progression across efforts within
the portfolio. The progressions through milestones
allows the organization to track high level
performance metrics about their various projects and
performers, and gateways provide built in pivot
points for leadership to rewards contracts that are
going well, and cut off contracts that are not.
Figure 2 depicts the end-to-end IT PfM process. The
process is broken down into three sub-portfolios,
each having their own identified set of milestones
and gateways. The IT Discovery Portfolio is
comprised of all the R&D efforts within the portfolio.
During these initial gateways, a preliminary set of
use cases are defined to highlight the capability gaps
the technology will address, senior leadership
commits to funding streams and identifies the final
transition home for the capability, and
vendors/technologies attempt build out a solution
that can immediately benefit the organization. These
development efforts are ranked against each other
based on overall business value to the organization,
with the top performers moving into the IT Project
phase.
Once projects have made it to the IT Project
portfolio, the initial business case and value to the
organization have been identified. During this stage,
a full set of requirements is fully flushed out, and the
technology is developed and hardened for
deployment. This process follows the current best
practices for Software Development, and at its
conclusion, the solution is ready to transition into a
production environment. Capabilities in the IT Asset
portfolio are all fielded systems, and are managed in
a Production environment.
Oversight and Execution
A business does not benefit from data collection, it
benefits from the insight that the data may provide.
The value of having data comes from how it can be
absorbed as information. Visual representation of
several aspects of the data enables a broader, more
effective understanding of what the data means to the
portfolio manager. While no one visualization can
provide all the information required to make sound
business decisions, a collection of them can provide
robust information that is comprehensible at a glance.
Tactical Edge has experience taking complex data
sets relating to the state of government IT, extracting
the useful information, and presenting it to the user
in a way that is meaningful.
While supporting the Logistics Vision and Strategy
Branch (LPV), Tactical Edge built a dashboard of
visualizations so that the Portfolio Managers could
understand the full breadth of capabilities the
Logistic IT Portfolio encompassed. During a
demonstration of the dashboard to the Deputy
Section Head, Mr. Grimm stated that he “learned
more in 20 minutes from looking at [our]
visualizations than [he had] in six months of staring
at spreadsheets.”
Figure 3 above uses sample data to recreate some of
the visualizations the Tactical Edge team created for
LPV that could be repurposed for NAVFAC EXWC.
Figure 3: End to End IT PfM Process
Figure 2: Example Dashboard Images

Expanded Capabilities
Building on the integrated tools, the management and
execution of the R&D portfolio gains new
capabilities that are currently difficult or impossible
to obtain. Although projects may run on varied
timelines and have different focuses, the aggregation
of project efforts in a single unified system allows for
collaboration points to be identified. Increasing
awareness of activities, technologies, and
experiments between participants and managers
creates a new opportunity for collaboration, which in
turn increases the value of the R&D portfolio.
Maintaining the various information artifacts and
documents created as part of the IT Project
Management process is a challenge, and in many
cases people turn to email, document repositories,
and other non-standard information management
techniques. The consolidation of project artifacts,
schedules, and other information in a single
environment assists in overall portfolio oversight,
and ensures that project information is maintained
through any leadership or ownership transitions.
Consolidation allows analysis of decisions made
during the R&D process, driving future investment
decisions. In many cases, simply understanding the
intent of an effort, finding relevant project
documentation, and tracking key milestones is
executed in an ad-hoc manner. Through the use of
this methodology, the overall effort is consistent,
knowledge is managed, and the effort is secure in the
event of planned or unplanned transitions.
Conclusion:
In an environment where senior leadership demands
increased capabilities while shrinking budgets are
becoming the norm, government officials must be
more careful now than ever before where they choose
to invest their funding. Add to it the fact that the IT
infrastructure employed by the DoD is aging and the
increased scrutiny brought on by an always-
connected community, and it becomes obvious that a
mature IT Portfolio Management strategy is the only
way to gracefully replace outdated technology with
new capabilities in a timely and cost effective
manner.
As Tactical Edge has done extensive work with
Headquarters Marine Corps helping them understand
their Logistics IT Portfolio, the team recommends
reaching out to the Logistics IT Portfolio lead is Mr.
Andrew Schaffer to get a government official’s
perspective on the value of a formal IT PfM process.
Mr. Schaffer can be reached by email at
andrew.schaffer@usmc.mil.
As it was discussed above, many of the visualizations
that were built for LPV could be repurposed for
NAVFAC EXWC. If it would be helpful, Tactical
Edge can provide a demonstration of these
visualizations using test data. A demonstration would
provide an opportunity to showcase some of the
functionality not pictured, and help the team
brainstorm an initial set of requirements that could be
developed and turned over within a 6-month
timeframe.
As this initial effort would be small and specific in
scope, funding could be allocated using Federal
Acquisition Regulations (FAR) Part 13 – Simplified
Acquisition Procedures and FAR 19.14 – Service-
Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business
Procurement Program. This would allow NAVFAC
EXWC to bring on Tactical Edge to quickly build the
prototype, and ensure the program fits well.
To schedule a demonstration, please reach out to
Steve Palmer, Director of East Coast Operations at
steve.palmer@tacticaledge.us.
References:
Maizlish, B., & Handler, R. (2010). IT (Information
Technology) Portfolio Management Step-by-
Step: Unlocking the Business Value of
Technology. Hoboken, New Jersey: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.

IT Portfolio Management Whitepaper FINAL

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