Achieving FITARA Compliance and Objectives with Technology Business Management (TBM)

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Achieving FITARA Compliance and Objectives with Technology Business Management (TBM)

Use the TBM framework and industry best practices to achieve FITARA

compliance, technology management objectives, and run your IT

organization like a business

2 | Achieving FITARA Compliance & Objectives with Technology Business Management (TBM)

Copyright © 2015 Cask Technologies LLC (“Cask”). All rights reserved. Cask and its logo are trademarks of Cask Technologies LLC.

Organizations must plan to implement and operationalize the policies, processes, and reporting that will ensure FITARA compliance as a component of your ongoing acquisition and operational management activities. The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) requires

agency CIOs, their delegates, and bureau CIOs to mature the way they manage

their IT environments. The CIO’s understanding and awareness of how IT

resources in their organization are being used and enhanced is critical to achieving

compliance and success. FITARA mandates organizational, portfolio, and cost &

performance transparency at a maturity level that is currently only used by high

performing commercial IT organizations.

FITARA is here.

Your organization

needs to be

compliant:

Now.

Achieving FITARA Compliance & Objectives with Technology Business Management (TBM) | 3


Additionally there is increased reporting and accountability for the activities,

performance, and outcomes of the IT resource investments your organization

makes.

CIOs are accountable for the quality of the data that drives this reporting, the

accurateness of their analysis, and the decisions and results made from this data.

The landscape for executive and senior IT leaders in the federal

government has changed. The CIO and their delegates have the

responsibility to ensure FITARA is operationalized now.



The CIO must now be a Technology, Acquisition, and Business Management Expert FITARA requires CIOs and their delegates to be experts at

managing IT through the technology lifecycle ‐ starting now

Do you understand all the FITARA compliance issues? Do you know what

frameworks are available to help sort it out? Are you up to date on the current

thinking covering the most preferred IT business management practices as they

relate to FITARA? It is complex.

What makes implementing FITARA even more complex is that the legislation is in

effect today, and the key dates for compliance are coming fast.

The Common Baseline for IT Management Self‐Assessments and Plans are due

August 15; within thirty (30) days of the plan’s approval, they must be posted to

the agency’s public website. Developing policies and plans is hard, but

communicating and implementing changes – and to start operating differently

within the organization is even harder.

And that’s not all ‐ August 2015 is also the month when all Bureau’s will publish

their IT Leadership Directory, Common Baseline IT processes and policies, and CIO

governance board notifications.

The updated 2015 PortfolioStat requirements also will put increased pressure on

your organization. The formerly annual reporting process is now quarterly. That’s

why there is a capital “M” in Technology Management as the cycle for collecting,

analyzing, and reporting on the required data has quadrupled. This means you you

will be in a continual pattern of PortfolioStat activities.

FITARA requires even more changes to both the things you are already doing (IDC

reporting, Commodity IT efficiencies, IT acquisition reform, use of shared services

and agile methodologies) and new activities that include Category management,

CIO effectiveness monitoring, and data enhancement.

You can’t continue to run IT the same way and achieve these new results.



What can Agency and Bureau CIOs, their delegates, and their offices do now to accelerate their path to FITARA Compliance – while supporting the move to continuous and transparency IT business management?

There are lots of things federal CIO’s have done in the past to

prevent success. The most common mistakes include:

Mistake #1: Do Nothing

That’s right. Nothing. You may have reason to believe that you are

already in compliance with your people, processes, and technology,

or maybe you are not prepared to move forward just yet. But how

do you know? It will be apparent once the assessments are in and

organizations are compared across the board.

Mistake #2: Do Not Plan

You may want to comply with the FITARA requirements, but you

don’t have a plan. If this planning capability does not exist in your

organization, or you do not have dedicated staff to put together a

competent FITARA compliance plan, then seek outside help.



Mistake #3: Keep your Plan to Yourself

Make FITARA your own private secret and don’t communicate it to

your team. That way you won’t have to explain why the other IT

organizations through‐out the federal government are ramping‐up

for major organizational change.

Mistake #4: Limited Placement of the Right People into

the Right Roles

As the CIO you have decided to manage this yourself. Why delegate

when your staff is already busy? Going ahead without a Strategic

Workforce Plan will inevitably result in capability gaps, training

deficits, and incomplete FITARA goals. Why take on that risk when it

can be mitigated through thoughtful consideration of where your

staff needs to be to fulfill the expectations of FITARA?

Mistake #5: Procrastinate and Cram Later

There are many things in FITARA that are complex and will take time

to mature within your agency into an acceptable operational mode.

Waiting will not make things better when compliance deadlines

approach.

Mistake #6: Fail to Integrate FITARA Compliance in your

overall IT Business Management Processes

With FITARA, Technology Business Management (TBM) means

assuring that your everyday systems are supporting the expectations

expressed in the guidance. Your business systems should generate

the required cost and performance information that satisfies the

intent as well as the letter of the law. Regular reporting will

necessitate an efficient use of technology to show how well you are

investing IT dollars, and what returns are flowing back to customers,

stakeholders, and the tax‐payer.



It is time for government CIOs to embrace the industry best

practice Technology Business Management (TBM), along with

portfolio and human capital management best practices, to

enhance and mature their IT management capability, including

the ability to ensure FITARA compliance and reporting as an

operational activity – not a “firefighting” activity.

Mature commercial organizations have been delivering services, over the years,

based on these same FITARA principles. The U.S. Government can leverage these

principles and quickly achieve compliance by adopting and tailoring these

processes and practices to their organizations.

The right solution is to implement the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework and best practices to enable FITARA Compliance and mature your organization’s ability to manage the Acquisition and Operation of IT in the Government



There are three things to do to get started.

Establish a TBM function within the Office of the CIO and agilely implement Technology Business Management (TBM) capabilities as core to your Common Baseline processes and approach

» Integrate core TBM activities (including Transparency and Planning & Budgeting capability) with Portfolio Management and Performance management practices

» Use this team to develop a TBM Plan that includes all of the required FITARA activities, including PortfolioStat and TechStat groups

» Enhance existing Portfolio Management methods into your TBM activities, tying investment management to mission alignment, cost transparency, and IT planning and budgeting governance activities

Base your updates to the IT Acquisition Cadres based on the “Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA)”

» SFIA [ pronounced /soˈfia/ ] provides a language that is the foundation for consistent, unambiguous definitions of IT based skills that enable you to clearly define, recruit and grow the skilled resources that you need.

» Don’t confuse Information Technology Management skills with underlying “degrees” such as computer science, management of information systems (MIS), or engineering. IT expertise requires having both technical education, a working knowledge of applied information technology around software development, infrastructure & operations, or IT project management.

» It is easier for you to teach acquisition and procurement to technologist, then it is to each technology and integration to non‐IT skilled personnel.



Leverage your TBM organization, group, or team to go fast to provide the collaborative TBM management and reporting capability within your organization

» Take an agile management approach to instantiation and operationalizing your TBM capability. You need to take lots of small steps, focusing on the 80% capability in 20% of the time.

The second phase of TBM adoption and process will naturally be identified in operationalizing the core framework.

» Automate the collection of data within your organization. Data will never be perfect, and your organization will never get any closer until you have a project to use the data (not just a plan to improve it)

» Adopt the coming Category Management and an open standard taxonomy (i.e. TBM Council’s ATUM model) for collecting and managing cost and performance data

Once your TBM capability is established and operationalized, most of the heavy lifting is done. Executives can focus on analyzing results and making decisions, not gathering data.



Cask has the Acquisition, Portfolio Management, and TBM Expertise along with the Government Experience and Knowledge to help you on your FITARA Journey Cask has significant experience helping both commercial and federal CIO’s

implement mature technology and IT business management processes – helping

run IT like a business – to deliver technology‐driven business solutions aligned to

the core mission of their business, ensuring cost transparency for all investment

decisions, and optimized portfolio’s and workforces.

Accelerated FITARA Planning, Process, & Implementation Support » Plan Development & Communication Support » TBM‐based Process Development » Data Discovery and Visibility » Organizational Change Management

Technology Business Management Operationalization » Taxonomy & Cost Model Development » IT Planning & Budgeting » Cost Transparency » Portfolio & Performance Management Integration

Organizational KSAs with SFIA (Skills Framework for the Information Age) » Standard Skills Taxonomy & Model » Organizational Knowledge, Skills, and Ability (KSA) Census » Human Performance Skills Enhance Planning & Execution

FITARA Automation using Collaborative Tools and Environments » Business Process Developing & Documentation » Tool / Automation Requirements & Selection Advisory » Process, Data, and Tool Automation and Enablement



About Us

Cask provides acquisition, program, and technology management consulting. We

help clients achieve FITARA compliance and operational excellence using Technology

Business Management (TBM) principals and best practices, including Portfolio

Management, IT Planning & Budgeting, and Cost Transparency

.

Technology Business Management Portfolio and Project Management

» TBM Readiness & Startup » Cost Transparency » IT Planning/Budget » Investment Optimization » Decision Support » IT Financial Management

» PMO Implementation, Operationalization, and Enhancement

» PPM Coaching » PPM Solution Design » PPM sub‐disciplines (APM,

SPM, PLM, etc.)

Program Support Services Service Management & Operations

» Acquisition Management » Program, Project, &

Schedule Management » Cost Estimation &

Financial Planning » Systems Engineering,

Logistics, Technology, and IT SMEs

» Maturity Assessments » Service Management

Strategy & Roadmaps » Service Portfolio & Catalog

Design » ITIL Best Practices » Rapid Process

Improvement Workshops

Cyber Security & Resiliency Business Transformation Services

» Cyber Security and IA Assessments

» Cyber Resiliency Management

» Information and Security Planning

» Governance, Risk & Compliance

» Organizational Change Management

» Business Process Management

» Measurement Systems & Reporting

» Performance Management » Execution Support



Contact Us For more information about how Cask’s TBM services can help with IT business

management and FITARA compliance, please contact us:

Cask TBM Account Executive

Sean Lingo +1 703.909.2618 [email protected]

Client Support Specialist

Elizabeth Buhl +1 804.335.9054 [email protected]

The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the

circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavor to provide accurate and

timely information, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is

received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one should act on such information

without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation