The US Government's Picture-Perfect Outsourcing Success - Completely Inside the US

Several years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to work on a project for a large US federal government department.

The client works in a number of different areas and all too often, different words are used to mean the same thing. Some people might use a colloquial term, others might use the formal scientific term, and there may be differences in spelling. Also, some terms may refer to a similar, but not exactly the same, thing as other terms.

The client needs to think about all these different variations when formulating policies or investigating claims. But the number of variations is so large that no one can reasonably be expected to know them all.

They decided to create a master "meta-data repository". This is a central dictionary and thesaurus of all the terms used by the client. Maintaining this repository is a difficult, tedious job that requires a great deal of organization, discipline, and rigor. It is very easy to slip up in this work. A mistake, however, can result in untold damage.

The job of creating and maintaining this repository was given to a large military contractor. I will refer to them as the "Prime Contractor" in this article.

They created what I still consider an awe-inspiring CMM Level 3 facility in Virginia to handle the work.

Before I describe the facility and why you can profit from knowing about this case study, it is important to describe the CMM/CMMI.


Relevant History of CMM/CMMI

Decades ago, the US Air Force (USAF) was spending and losing a lot of money on large software projects. They wanted to know the root cause and also wanted to know if there was a way to assess the capabilities of their contractors before a contract was awarded. Carnegie-Melon University worked with the USAF to build what was eventually called the Software Capability Maturity Model (SW-CMM or just CMM).

By looking at how software was developed the CMM team was able to identify Key Process Areas (KPAs) that were critical to the success of a large project. They determined that if an organization were to master and maintain each of these KPAs, the chance of success for a project would be maximized.

They also determined that different organizations were at different levels of maturity in terms of the software process. Level 1 meant that the organization could deliver results once. Level 2 meant that this success could be repeated. Level 3 meant that the processes were mature, documented, and could be relied-upon to produce consistent, successful results. Levels 4 and 5 were for much more sophisticated environments such as secure military projects and large NASA initiatives like space shuttle systems development.

So, a Level 3 certification is gold for most clients looking to outsource a mission-critical software development effort.

More recently, CMM has been replaced by CMMI (CMM Integration). Instead of focusing on just software, CMMI now covers business processes and integration within, throughout, and beyond an organization.

To find out more about CMMI, please visit their website: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/general/

So, the Prime Contractor for my client had this CMM Level 3 certified facility that blew me away.

They knew, because of the KPAs that they had defined, that when a new term was introduced, it had to go through the following steps:

1. It had to be catalogued.
2. It had to be researched to find similar terms.
3. Impacts on existing the client's computer systems had to be determined.
4. Impacted software had to be re-written, tested, and deployed.
5. Post-deployment support had to be provided.

Each of these KPAs were pre-defined and streamlined. As members of the team, we had to execute each step precisely and in the right sequence. There were additional KPAs related to our training, performance assessment, computer maintenance, and so on.

Even the KPAs for rewriting software were incredible. At the time, I considered myself to be a master of a software engineering tool called Oracle Designer. In theory, I knew, you could use this tool to take care of KPAs 3 and 4 above. But I had never seen it done.Any time we generated a software application using Oracle Designer, we always had to make changes before deployment.

At the Prime Contractor, however, there was no such thing. We used this tool flawlessly and were able to take new terminology through its cycle within 2-4 days.


I bring this example to your attention to illustrate the level of sophistication that can be developed.

The Prime Contractor, I am sure, spent millions upon millions of dollars to develop their CMM Level 3 facility.

When I created a software development facility in 2000, we knew it would take a lot of money, and up to 10 years before reaching the point where we could even consider asking for Level 3 certification.

It just takes this type of investment to build the capability to deliver results. This is true for software and non-software processes, similar to what the Prime Contractor was doing. The payback is definitely there. The client, after paying very large outsourcing fees to the Prime Contractor, was able to save more than a few million dollars every year.


The point, though, is that you do not have to make this type of investment. Companies all over the world have CMMI and other certifications. They have already done the work. They have already made the investment. All you have to do is talk to them and organize yourself so that you can benefit from their investment.

In the next article, I will give the example of one such company in India. And if I am successful in contacting the right person, I will give the example of a company in the US that is doing similar things outside the software industry.