2014 Issue

33 PRISM TM APPROACH | continued on page 34 industry concerned with the sustainment of this particular weapon system. Although ev- eryone comes from different organizations, for the sake of the weapon system, they are assigned into Integrated Product Teams to work cooperatively to a common goal. That common goal is themission that the system is dedicated to. “Are we ready?” This is the Risk Board co- chair, Bob. He is glancing at the wall clock and seeing that it is time to start. There must be at least 60 people in the theater. The Level 1 Managers are sitting at the front table chatting and looking over some hardcopy handouts. The room gets quiet as the meeting administrator stands and points at the screen. “As you can see,” the meeting administra- tor, Carl, says, “we have one open action item. The Level 2 IPTs are still considering the change to our risk criteria to make force protection automatically a level 5 conse- quence in every case. No one has come back with an example yet where this would be inappropriate, but we still have a few days before the action is due.” “OK” Interject both Bob andCheryl, the co- chairs from the contractor and government customer. “Thanks. Let’s move on.” “Betty is here representing the Propulsion Team,” Carl says by way of introduction. Betty steps to the front of the room as her first slide comes up on the large screen. “We are proposing a new risk to theweapon system. P113. The Level 3 and Level 2 IPTs see this as fairly unlikely in the near term, but with growing likelihood and, if it happens, very bad consequences for the war fighter.” Betty fumbles with the slide control in her hand and brings up a graph. “We have been running tests on 22 of these propulsion manifolds and, as you can see by the curve, it is becoming obvious that degradation has started. If this part of themanifoldweakens, the system will shut down and the mission will fail. I would like to mention that it was one of our summer interns who first brought this concern to our attention.” “Wow, that’s great! You really are getting everyone involved in finding risks!” Blurts out Bob. He’s a true believer inmaking sure every member of the team knows they can introduce a risk for consideration. “So are you counting this risk against reli- ability, then?” Asks Cheryl. “Yes, we considered safety for a while, but it looks like this failure mode won’t result in people getting hurt or the system being any further damaged.” Betty flips back to the risk chart. “So you see we have entitled this risk Manifold Corrosion and have listed the if-then statement as: If the propulsion manifold continues to degrade, then the system will stop functioning, most likely in the middle of a sortie.” “Have you discussed anymitigation options yet?” Asks Bob. Note what is happening in this review. Every risk has a number (P113) and a title for easy reference. Every risk is stated the same way with a clear if-then statement tied to a readiness metric like safety or reliability. Most importantly, these metrics are associ- ated with the mission the weapon system supports. Some call these metrics KPPs. Others call them readiness parameters. You may have a different name, but you have to have these mission parameters to employ a sustainment-centered risk system like we use in our PRISM™ approach. The risks are NOT written against the suc- cess of a project or program. They are NOT written against the question of whether the contractor will make profit this year. They are directly related to the end user’smission. In this brief examplewe have seen the teams observing the problem, in this case via de- liberate testing. They have created a risk in a specific format so that it can be compared to other weapon system mission risk. And we hear the beginnings of a plan about how to fix the problem. Sustainment follows this observe-identify-plan cycle. The PRISM™ Approach helps to make sure this cycle is efficient and that it results in products that help the top managers get funding and other resources for the required sustainment activities associated with observe-identify- plan and to fund the required fixes. YOU CAN APPLY THIS METHODOLOGY The PRISM™ approach starts with a culture of Mission First. It seems simple enough to have an attitude of understanding and sup- porting your customer’s ultimate reason for the system– themission. But, as amatter of fact, the deck is stacked against you. Many things conspire to keep you from this vision. Here are a few. Young members of your team have no experience with the mission and probably only vaguely understand it, if at all. Older members have a good grasp of your con- tract and Statement of Work and don’t see wheremission-orientation results in success, as measured by profit. Your customer’s portfolio is probably divided among many contracts and organizations. Your contract with one aspect of the portfolio may have a sub-optimal “mission” (perhaps keeping stock on shelves) and no sense of the real mission for the system at the top level. PRISM makes sure each member of the team knows the ultimate mission because every member of the team is responsible to keep an eye out for mission risks. If you cannot keep radars available in the supply system, this ultimately translates to a system that is not available and a mission that cannot get accomplished.