Middle Tier Documentation

Rapid Prototyping Documentation

Rapid Fielding Documentation – Statutory

Rapid Fielding Documentation – Regulatory

• It is the responsibility of the initiating or assigned PM to propose required program documentation, decision points, metrics, guardrails, as well as timing and scope of decision reviews, and to establish cost, schedule, risk, and performance objectives. This strategy should be determined at program initiation, approved by the MDA, and documented in the ASD.
  • Validated requirements should be documented in a previously-approved or subsequently coordinated requirements document. When available, the requirements document should include the system specification sheet as an attachment.
  • Documentation should be completed within a reasonable amount of time of requirements validation.
• The PM should stress tailored documentation while complying with applicable statutory requirements, as well as the FAR, Defense FAR Supplement, or Air Force FAR Supplement requirements. Though speed through streamlining should be fervently pursued, it should be balanced with transparency and accountability considerations to maintain confidence in Air Force rapid acquisition programs.
• At a minimum, the PM should consider the intent of the following documents and their applicability to their specific rapid acquisition authority and shall complete documents statutorily required (Tier-0):
  • Tailored Acquisition Baseline / Tailored Integrated Master Schedule,
  • Tailored Acquisition Strategy Document
  • Tailored Concept Analyses,
  • Clinger-Cohen Act Compliance, Risk Management Framework, and Cybersecurity Strategy,
  • Program Environmental Safety Occupational Health Evaluation,
  • National Environmental Policy Act/Executive Order 12114 Compliance Schedule,
  • Frequency Allocation Application,
  • Program protection to include critical program information, supply chain risk, and anti-tamper considerations,
  • Intelligence and Threat Information/Life Cycle Mission Data Plan.
• The PM will plan for and document in the ASD the following items:
  • Acquisition and funding requirements to include how competition requirements applicable to the given contract and acquisition authority will be met
  • Demonstration and evaluation of performance of prototypes in an operational environment within five years (where applicable),
  • Risk management,
  • Transition planning for prototypes to new or existing acquisition programs,
  • Lifecycle costs, sustainment, logistics support, and system interoperability (if fielding, may be addressed in a tailored Life Cycle Sustainment Plan),
  • Test planning (may be addressed in a tailored Test and Evaluation Master Plan),
  • Intellectual property strategy.
• The PM should provide adequate information to support Air Force evaluation of cost, schedule, and performance and to support MDA, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Congressional reporting where required.
• All rapid acquisition activities using investment funding shall be included on the Investment Master List (IML) unless waived by the SAE.
  • ACAT II and III-level rapid acquisition activities will be exempt from the Acquisition Master List (AML) and are required to complete quarterly, vice monthly, Monthly Acquisition Reports (MARs) unless waived by the SAE.
  • ACAT I-level rapid acquisition activities will be included on the AML and must complete monthly MARs that may be tailored to the reporting needs of the program unless waived by the SAE.
• For rapid acquisition activities, the PM will ensure the following data is collected in Comprehensive Cost and Requirement System/Program Management Resource Tools (Tier-0):
  • Name of effort,
  • Capability gap or problem being addressed,
  • Qualifications as a rapid acquisition activity,
  • Schedule acceleration over a traditional acquisition approach,
  • Budget, funding source, and date funds were approved,
  • Completion data and criteria,
  • Current status,
  • Contracting approach and time to award.
• The PM shall provide a brief (e.g., 1- to 2- page) tri-yearly report summarizing status of progress towards cost, schedule, and performance objectives; progress toward design goals; and likelihood of crossing guardrail thresholds in future.
  • The summary will be reviewed by the next highest MDA in the reporting chain (i.e., the PEO or SAE) for accountability as well as evaluation and application of best rapid acquisition practices across the Air Force. The SAE will provide his/her updates to Congress.
  • To ensure consistent and transparent reporting, summaries for rapid acquisition activities meeting the criteria of a MDAP will contain information similar to a Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) and will be submitted to Congress. Submittal of the summary report does not indicate the program is an MDAP, nor require entry or tracking in the SAR database.
• Capabilities and Limitations Reports may be appropriate for prototypes provided to units for training or deployed directly to operational units. These reports have no prescribed format. Reference AFI 99-103, Capabilities-Based Test and Evaluation, for more information.

PMs must provide a program strategy through the PEO to the AAE, that includes threat; operational gap addressed by the MTA effort; why and how an MTA is appropriate; estimated lifecycle costs; risk management; and cost, schedule and performance metrics. Additionally the program strategy:

• Identifies the supporting requirements document or process by which a requirement will be approved within six months. The requirement may be revised and revalidated at key knowledge points during the prototyping/fielding phases of the program. This requirement could come in the form of a Directed Requirement or via another Army approval process.
• Explains why the particular effort meets the criteria, both Statutory and Army policy, for execution under MTA’s rapid prototyping or rapid fielding pathways.
• Describes a full plan, from initiation to completion, and proposes required documentation, decision points and metrics, as well as timing, scope and level of decision reviews, and cost, schedule, and performance objectives.
• Discusses risks and risk mitigation approaches. Risks will be well defined and mitigation plans will be tied to knowledge points. Plans shall document risk reduction throughout the execution of prototyping and fielding efforts
• Discusses the proposed funding plan. Documentation will be streamlined but include a sufficient level of detail to support AAE decision-making.
• Show where the MTA effort fits within the Army Modernization Priorities and/or supports the National Defense Strategy, if appropriate.

Changes to the approved program strategy require prior Decision Authority approval.

Documentation can consume a significant amount of a program’s schedule. To accelerate a program, the team must constrain the amount of time spent developing, reviewing, and approving documents. The GAO reported in GAO-15-192, acquisition programs spent over 2 years on average completing numerous information requirements for their most recent milestone decision, yet acquisition officials considered only about half of the requirements as high value. The requirements, in total, averaged 5,600 staff days to document.

The following three principles can help enable constraints:

1. The Pareto Principle: 80% of the results comes from 20% of the effort. Therefore, focus on documenting the most valuable elements of the program’s strategy.
2. The Minimum Effective Dose (MED): Medical professionals recommend patients take the least amount of medicine that delivers the desired effect. Similarly, write “as little as possible, as much as necessary.”
3. The Agile Manifesto: The Agile software approach emphasizes working software over comprehensive documentation, and offers this perspective: “Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.”

An acceleration team should thus aim to only produce the documents that are useful and needed to manage the program, rather than writing “compliance only” documents which exist only to satisfy the interests of an outside stakeholder.

Actions You Can Take

• Define Just Enough Identify what “information” is required by law and by policies (at which level of the organization) as well as additional documentation is commonly required. Note: There may be a law that requires a program to provide X information, yet agency headquarters staff have interpreted that to be complete a large document per their template or standards.
• List The Minimum Set Identify the minimum set of documents that can capture the required information. Keep in mind that a functional oversight organization may traditionally expect a functional document. A program office may merge the content of that document with others to minimize the number of documents to coordinate. It also provides each oversight staff the ability to see the bigger picture when reviewing their area. However it opens up the risk that that oversight staff then provide comments on areas of the larger document beyond their functional domain.
• Propose Tailored Approach If there are requirements in policy that don’t make sense for your program, identify them and offer recommendations to tailor or waive that requirement.
• Focus on Relevance more than Compliance Understand the difference between a requirement that a program must have an XYZ strategy which complies with an organization’s template vs a requirement that a program capture and convey the core elements of their strategy to decision authorities and stakeholders. Ultimately the documentation is designed to ensure the program office has done sufficient critical thinking to execute the next phase of the program.
• Match Plans With Requirements Develop an outline of the documentation the program office plans to compile, with the intended content in each document. Identify how this proposed set meets the documentation requirements.
• Get Buy-In Early Present the proposed documentation outline with the decision authorities EARLY in the process to solicit their approval. As some functional oversight organizations may resist tailoring their functional document, this may require the program’s leadership chain (assuming they agree with the approach) to engage on this is how we need to move forward for the program.
• Assign Responsibility Identify leads responsible for each document, who maintain the “gold copy”, work with a team to collaboratively iterate on the document, and keep all required stakeholders updated on the content and progress.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. 

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

References

• GAO Report 15-192 on DoD Decision Making
• Please Tailor Your Acquisition Strategy!, Brian Schultz
• Why Lengthy Business Plans Increase The Risk Of Failure, Alexander Osterwalder
• The 9-Word NDA, Dan Ward
• Experiments In Doing Less, Dan Ward
• Simplify Your Strategy, Pete Modigliani
• The Need for Agile Program Documentation, LTC TJ Wright
• DOD Acquisition Streamlining (NPS Capstone Project on reducing acquisition documentation), Jennifer Echard, Jeffrey Harris, Karen Richey