Orion's Belt Aerospace in Alabama
Orion's Belt Aerospace in Alabama
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Program Management and
Project Management Services
Program Management
We provide program management - internally focused on team and supplier strategies as well as externally focused for customer relationships, contract management, and business development. We embody the need to responsiveness in program management balanced with the need to not jump before taking the time to ensure effectiveness in decision making and communication. Our team has extensive red program recovery experience, which highlights our ability to come up to speed quickly on existing efforts, assess gaps in performance, prioritize efforts, communicate with care, and work across teams to efficiently execute.
Project Management
We do schedules, we do budgets, and we value PMP certifications. What we bring to project management that is different is a focus on risk and opportunity management that leads to efficiency and effective prioritization of activities. We also bring a passion for scope control. While not every new activity can be a change order, intentionally planning and communicating what the team is adding or changing is critical for maintaining schedules and budgets.
One of the benefits of all these skills is that they come together beautifully to support Agile DevOps. We support teams in DevOps planning by helping to scope the increments and maintain a relationship with the customer where we can reach agreement on priorities for the deliveries. This methodology can reduce risk on a project by allowing key functionality to be tested and vetted early as well as by bringing focus to the development team's efforts. DevOps is a proven and successful methodology for tackling large or complex projects.
Agile, Waterfall, EVMS - Together!
What do EVMS, Waterfall projects, and the Scaled Agile Framework have in common? They can effectively be combined on small and large projects to ensure timely delivery of products while providing flexibility to smaller teams within the project. Our team has extensive experience with both Agile and Waterfall projects, as well as how to take the best of both worlds into an Earned Value framework. We have EVMS expertise on U.S. Govt Cost Plus programs from a few million dollars to > $1B in size, as well as expertise in writing the EVMS System Description Document and establishing CASFAR compliant processes.
Proposal Support
Program and Project management during a proposal serves two critical roles:
- Developing a relationship with the customer and ensuring their vision is reflected and accomplished through the proposed solution
- Ensuring a fully compliant proposal is submitted
Our team has expertise in both areas. We partner with Mission System Engineering (and have our own expertise in Mission System Engineering) to "unblank the page" for the solution and its realistic execution. We are experts in laying out development roadmaps with draft cost and schedule data.
We also ensure fully compliant proposals are submitted. Especially for government contracts, there are a wide array of requirements that must be met - including themes, supplemental data, cost models, and more. Missing something can mean the proposed work doesn't get past the administrative review. So, we are diligent and thorough on the templating of the proposal documents and reviewing the proposal before submittal.
Govt Contract Startup
Contract startup is a great time to get the project on the right path - for scope, cost control, risk management, interface management, and more. Our team is skilled at developing WBS structures to appropriately monitor cost - the detail needed but not going overboard to where management incurs unnecessary costs. Startup is also a critical time for setting the communication and cultural norms for the team and suppliers / subcontractors. With the whirl of activity, it is easy to gloss over this very crucial phase. We have best practices to ease the work of formulating the what, when, and how of these kickoff communications and planning.
Design Phase
We have experience with development on space hardware, Navy hardware, and satellite ground station software projects from the System Requirements Review (SRR) through the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), Critical Design Review (CDR) and Manufacturing Readiness Review. The greatest dangers in this phase include unplanned/unfunded schedule extensions driven by a desire to perfect the design. These adversely impact procurement and AIT timelines. Leadership during the design phase goes beyond cost and schedule - teams need guidance on where "done enough" is on each review in order to keep progress rolling and continue with positive customer engagement.
Assembly, Integration, and Test
PM leadership during the AIT phase of a program can make all the difference in the timeliness of the product delivery. Our methodology focuses on balancing technical necessity with scope control, all on a foundation of transparent blameless communication. For on-time and on-budget deliveries, scope control is an obvious must. The AIT phase of a project can present myriad opportunities for adding extra testing or development to support potential holes in the plan. Some of these findings will be of technical necessity and must be addressed formally to ensure there is agreement between stakeholders on the path forward. Transparent blameless communication is a cultural mindset for the team that enables swift identification and resolution of anomalies and risks.
Verification & Validation
Our technical expertise serves us well in the requirements verification and validation phase of a project. We have a clear understanding of contract scope, technical work completed, and test results that enables our leaders to support technical efforts of systems engineering personnel with respect to customer concerns on requirements selloff. Sometimes, this looks like support in getting something accepted, sometimes it is communication and direction on outstanding tasks, and other times it looks like negotiations for contract change requests. We focus on maintaining positive relationships while doing the right thing technically throughout this phase of project acceptance.
DevOps
We support teams in DevOps planning by helping to scope the increments and maintain a relationship with the customer where we can reach agreement on priorities for the deliveries. This methodology can reduce risk on a project by allowing key functionality to be tested and vetted early as well as by bringing focus to the development team's efforts. DevOps is a proven and successful methodology for tackling large or complex projects.
Tech Transition: Prototype to
Operations
We have many projects' worth of experience leading hardware manufacturing projects as well as software efforts from prototype / development stages to operation. Managing this transition requires leading teams through substantial planning efforts on specifications, training, staffing, budgeting. Policy and culture are just as important to the success of the effort. We work with Stakeholders to document and address all the hurdles and challenges to ensure success and increase mission capabilities.
Operations & Sustainment
O&M and Sustainment activities are often performed in an Agile multi-contractor multi-customer environment where desired changes and upgrades exceed resources. We have a plan for that! Our team has many years of experience not only successfully managing backlog to optimize the value delivered to customers but in leading and training team members on the why of the process / what's in it for them as well as what we need to track for long-term sustainable success.
Program Closeout - Govt Contracts
Project closeout is a critical time in the lifecycle because issues can impact company profits as well as reputation. In a perfect world, all property is found and the closeout is straightforward. In the real world, our team is experienced in negotiating property closeout with both aerospace primes and government customers. We also treat employees with empathy - balancing the need to collect information as part of closeout with the knowledge that they are either immersed in learning a new project or concerned about the project closure affecting their employment.
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