From Chaos to Order: Building a Business Architecture

Michael KingHalfaker and AssociatesChief Technology Officer

• Company founded in 2006 with the vision of Continuing to Serve…

• Founded by West Point graduate and Army Military Police Officer Dawn Halfaker (Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned, Woman-Owned, 8(a) Small Business)

• 150-employee company focused on providing Advanced Analytics, Software Engineering, IT Infrastructure, and Cyber Security solutions to Federal Government customers

Halfaker and Associate Overview

Culture built on Military Principles

Lead from the Front Never Give Up Stay Positive Plan, Plan, Plan (Op Orders) Take Care of Your People Know the Job above you and

below you Demand Excellence

• Halfaker began to accelerate growth in 2013, approaching 100 employees spread across 20 projects

• As the Company grew, we struggled to maintain consistency, ensure quality, and manage risk across increasing number of projects spread across the country

• To provide excellent service, we relied on a few heroes who were constantly reacting to emergencies, swarming issues like 5 year olds playing soccer

Business Challenge

• Halfaker needed an integrated framework (CMMI-DEV OPD), or business architecture, to scale Halfaker effectively:

Codify how we ensured every customer would receive excellent, innovative results

Align people, systems, and processes to strategic goals

The Plan: Build a Business Architecture

Strategic Goals

Business Processes

Templates and Forms

Business Systems (Applications)

Guidelines and Policies

Org. Chart (How people are organized)

We created this framework, The Halfaker Way, to: Connect the enterprise activities and assets we had Provide a platform to continue to scale the Company

We defined a governance approach: Approach details like document naming, numbering, and

storage locations How The Halfaker Way can be revised (Who can change

what?)

Build Systems, Don’t React to Emergencies

“In 1996, I read Michael Gerber's The E-Myth, and it taught me that people don't fail; systems do,” – Brian Scudamore, Founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK who scaled his company from 1 to 270 locations in 7 years

How to Organize and Prioritize Good Ideas

• We initially struggled to prioritize all the ideas we had and best practices we found

• We created a single PI backlog identify and prioritize process improvement (PI) activities (CMMI-DEV OPF)

Integrated PI Backlog

Sprint Planning

PI Sprint Backlog

• Define process architecture• Project Management and

Engineering practicesCMMI

• Value-focused mindset• Require teams to plan every few

weeks, get work done, and get feedback

Agile Scrum

• Improve processes to align with customers and business needs

• Compliance with ISO 9001, 27001, etc.

Additional Biz Needs

1. Defined a meeting battle rhythm to systematically manage Company operations, connecting annual strategic goals and measures to weekly, monthly, and quarterly checkpoints

– Minimize meetings by only investing in repeating what’s most important and integrate those needs into existing meeting structure

Intentional Meeting Rhythm

Meeting Type Meeting FrequencyAnnual Strategy Presentation AnnualStrategy Performance Review QuarterlyCompany Performance Review Monthly

Performance Improvement MonthlyStaff/Leader Coordination Meeting Weekly

Key Domains of Coordination, such as Sales or Recruiting Weekly

2. Built a tiered project management framework that defines how to manage projects, based on level of risk and complexity

- Avoid duplicating entire process architectures and processes, tailor them based on needs

Tailor Processes based on Needs

Project Category Characteristics Tailoring

A Large Complex High risk

Required to perform all processes

B Medium-sized Medium-complexity Medium risk

Some processes are not required

C Small Simple Low risk

Most processes are not required, based on lower level of complexity and risk

3. Taught management lifecycles including Scrum, Kanban, and Scrum of Scrums to help teams better plan and execute

- Define how your organization defines management lifecycles and train employees

- Train employees to understand the strengths and weaknesses of these lifecycles, so they can make informed decisions around selecting and tailoring lifecycles to their projects

- Ensure people from each lifecycle are represented at process improvement discussions

- For large, Agile implementations, study best practices from different Scaled Agile frameworks (e.g. SAFe, DAD, LeSS, Scrum.org Nexus)

Invest in Multiple Project Lifecycles

4. Deploy opinionated tools (e.g. project templates for SharePoint project sites, JIRA issue types, and JIRA workflows) to enable quick, guided behavioral change

- Configure tools with initial recommendations and opinions built-in- Train teams to understand these configurations and the intent behind them- Determine what parts of system guidelines, governance, and configurations

can be changed by teams without approval, which require approval, and which changes are not allowed

Deploy Opinionated Tools

Traditional, top-down, intensely

prescriptive management

(Bureaucratic, Consistent)

Pure Agile, completely self-organizing teams who select their own tools and processes

(Tailored, Fragmented)Balanced, organizational management approach

5. Carrots: Praised teams who hit deadlines and fixed issues quickly6. Sticks: Held teams accountable through monthly audits (based on ISO 9001 and PPQA), tracking issues with JIRA (overdue tickets are reported to company leadership weekly), and discussing them weekly with senior leaders- A negative (sticks-only approach) creates a culture where people are

afraid to fail

Balance Support and Accountability

“Trust but

Verify”

Assume Positive Intent

Balanced Leader-

ship

Mentor and

Coach

The Results

• We moved away from relying on a few stars (heroes) reinventing wheels to a cohesive team with a systematic approach to serving our customers

• Halfaker was able to bid, win, and execute on larger, more complex work, including winning a $100 million BPA to support DoD Digital Government initiatives and 1 of 21 awards on the $22B VA T4NG IDIQ

• Number of emails went down dramatically for project teams, due to the use of collaboration tools

• Customer satisfaction (measured by CPARS ratings) went up over 14% in just 18 months

Lessons Learned

1. Invest in training your process improvement leaders early on in CMMI, Agile, tools (e.g. JIRA, and other relevant frameworks, tools, and techniques

2. Don’t think that writing processes is the hard part of process improvement – change management (people) is the hard part of process improvement

3. Add feedback loops and verification points to existing meetings when possible to reinforce new behaviors (and avoid adding more meetings)

4. Use Agile sprints to manage all activities, not just software development projects, or projects (use to manage back-office departments and process improvement activities)

5. Always be thinking about building systems – define the process, write it down, train people, and ensure someone has ownership to run it, so you as the business and process improvement leader can go create/improve the next things (See CMMI GP’s)

Questions

• Questions?

• Follow-up Questions? Want to Connect?• michael.king@halfaker.com• @mikehking (Twitter)• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehking