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U.S. Army ESTA, Technical Profiles

Goal

Provide guidance to Army IT implementation direction, in a number of differing IT disciplines.

Solution

Development of nearly a dozen Technical Profiles in a 9 month span.

Results

Introduction

One of the responsibilities of the Enterprise Systems Technology Activity (ESTA) is enforcing enterprise systems management processes and activities required to operate and manage the transformed Army infrastructure at the enterprise level.  Given this responsibility, one of the Director ESTA's top projects was the development of Technical Profiles, the purpose of which was to detail how the enterprise would operate in the near future.  These Technical Profiles were to be guidance documents for future IT procurement.

Prior to that point, Technical Profiles within the organization had previously been very brief, extremely focused technical manuals of, typically, 3-4 pages, detailing a very specific process --- and targeted towards operational administrators.

The new Technical Profiles desired by the Director were much greater in scope, dealing in very large issues (e.g., how will email be done in the near future? how will networks be managed?), and focused on the near future (3 - 5 years).    The scope and complexity of the new Technical Profiles was vastly greater than ever before, and new in concept to the organization as a whole.  Based, in part on that, the previous contractor had struggled and failed to produce a single guidance document in the course of a year's time. 

Then Ephibian personnel were brought in, in the challenging context and chartered with developing each Technical Profile on a pace of about on every 3 weeks.

What did we do?

About once every 3 to 4 weeks, we were given the latest priority topic.  From that time we had ~ 3 weeks to develop an initial draft Technical Profile, and within ~ 6 weeks staff that Technical Profile within ESTA and incorporate changes.

Each Technical Profile had a set of mandated subsections, which included:

  • A Technical Overview of the requirement and approach in layman's terms
  • The documented requirements, where such requirements existed
  • A DoDAF-compliant architectural models, including various operational, system and technical views of the capability as required by DoDAF standards
  • A mapping to compliance with the Army's Enterprise Management Model, the AENIA
  • A mapping to DoD/Joint models for IT
  • A listing of relevant standards and DoD guidance
  • etc

Over a 10 month period, we developed and staffed nearly a dozen Technical Profiles on a wide range of enterprise management topics.  Given the complexity and amount of required detail for each Technical Profile, an average size Technical Profile was approximately 100 pages long.

How did we do it?

  • Developed ~ 2/3 of the Technical Profiles ourselves; worked closely with MITRE to review and edit the remaining ~ 1/3
  • Interviewed the subject matter experts within ESTA and NETCOM
  • Worked closely with ESTA expertise in requirements and AENIA architecture
  • Became proficient in DoDAF modeling
  • Read extensively on the latest Army/DoD IT regulations, including but not exclusive to, IT security
  • Worked with our ESTA contact to understand priorities, get the Technical Profiles staffed and to resolve issues in direction

What was the result?

As the documents were staffed, some reached the Director for review and comment.  His feedback was that the effort was fully on-track, and the documents contained precisely the level and extent of detail he desired when he initiated the effort.

The documents helped focus guidance on some of the prime ESTA efforts over the next subsequent 3 - 5 years.