It Process Redesign and Resource Management

IT Process Redesign and Resource Management in General Dynamics C4 Systems

1. Company Background

General Dynamics C4 Systems (GDC4S) is a world leader in providing secure communication networking and information assurance solutions. GDC4S is a business unit of the Information and Technology business group of General Dynamics Corporation.

General Dynamics C4 Systems’ Battle Management Systems (BMS) section combines product and platform capabilities, communication architectures, intelligence and surveillance systems, human-centered design, and extensive large-scale integration expertise to produce advanced battle management systems.

I’m currently working as a Software Tester on the BMS Command Post of the Future (CPOF) program, whose main customer is the US Army. The project consists of an executive level decision support system that provides situational awareness and collaborative tools to support decision making. Over 3,000 CPOF systems have been delivered to the military, 1,200 of which have been deployed and used in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

2. Problem Description

General Dynamics C4 Systems is currently rated at level 5 (highest level) on the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). CMMI is an industry-recognized standard for benchmarking process integration and improvement. The framework defines a set of objective standards for assessing an organization's full range of engineering and organizational processes. While the company has focused to achieve this level for their Engineering / Project Management processes, I believe its internal IT department is in a completely different ballpark. A good way to measure and assess the value of IT in business terms (contribution to productivity, quality and competitiveness) is by evaluating its strategic alignment maturity. I’ve evaluated GDC4’s IT department’s strategic alignment maturity to be 1.8 in the Strategic Alignment Maturity Model...