(Adam)The first project that came to my mind when I re-read through these was a tasking we received from the project office asking us to figure out a new feature delivered by the prime that had no documentation. While the task didn’t directly align with our labs primary functions, there was enough expertise with a little overlap that they figured they could give this work to us. This was right when the first big wave of COVID was kicking off and the prime had sent home all of the people who didn’t need to be in the office. Unfortunately, this included the technical writers who would be in charge of writing the procedures to make the new feature work. Between our experience, our connections with the prime, and our contact with the warfighters, the project office knew we would be able to handle it. Below I will highlight how the critical success factors applied to us.
1. Project mission: While the mission wasn’t exactly well defined, we knew exactly what we needed to do. We created our own objectives and assigned them across the team.
2. Top management support: As contractors we can’t speak on behalf of the government, we just need the government lead to say “yes” and let us at the problem. This happened and we got to work.
3. Project plans and schedule: We had a plan, but we never really defined a schedule. With our team we know people are going to get the work that they need to get done finished in a timely manner.
4. Client consultation: Part of the reason we have this work is because of our reach back with the “client”. With the poor documentation, everyone knew that there would be questions, so giving us the head start to familiarize ourselves with the new feature would work out for everyone.
5. Personnel: Our team is small and static, but we have the expertise to handle surprise taskings like this. We have former soldiers who used the system, engineers who have helped design similar systems, and senior people who have been around since the system was in development. The project office knew we had the personnel to complete this mission.
6. Technical tasks: This seems to largely tie in with personnel having the technical knowledge and we have that in spades.
7. Client acceptance: The warfighters would much rather deal with our team that doesn’t change much instead of the prime who has people come and go constantly. We know them and they know us.
8. Monitoring and feedback: This didn’t really apply to our project. We provide feedback to the prime, but for all we know they have our emails going straight to the recycle bin.
9. Communications: We have communication channels with all parties involved. We worked as the hub in the hub and spoke relationship that gathered all the knowledge and assisted sharing to all parties.
10. Troubleshooting: This has been way bigger than everyone expected. When the prime delivered, they did it with no warfighter feedback (because COVID) and developers fresh out of college can read requirements, but they won’t understand how everything is supposed to work. Once it was delivered we got a new LoE that is dedicated to the test and warfighter support/troubleshooting.