Program Management

The Government is required by the Clinger-Cohen Act and OMB guidance to demonstrate the value information systems contribute to each agency’s mission performance and periodic review of its information systems to determine whether those systems fulfill ongoing and anticipated mission requirements. GAITS assists our customers in establishing and implementing a process of monitoring, assessing and following-up business systems so agency management can be assured on a recurring basis that the systems are reliable and properly managed. In complying with this legislation, GAITS is committed to focusing efforts on improving customer information system management.

GAITS assists in the implementation of a set of processes and procedures for Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 2 and Level 3 Key Process Areas (KPAs). These processes supplement the existing GAITS Systems Development Methodology (SDM), and serve as the basis for how GAITS ensures quality systems are delivered to its customers.

To fulfill this objective, GAITS will:

• Provide project management and contract administration support, training and oversight to Government systems development project managers and contracts managers;
• Define and develop processes and procedures, and conduct Information Technology (IT) system reviews;
• Define and manage processes and procedures, prepare materials, and follow-up on action items/plans for a new IT Configuration/Change Control Board (CCB);
• Manage and update the SEI CMMI KPA processes and procedures, and establish a process and product improvement program;
• Assess Configuration Management (CM) processes, recommend and support consolidated customer-wide CM implementation;
• Work with Quality Assurance (QA) staff or the Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) staff to establish an agency’s quality program to ensure all deliverables comply with SDM standards
• Perform management and technology evaluation, develop recommendations for management or technology refreshment, establish plans, and perform implementation of the plans and follow-up where appropriate.
• Implement viable management, quality and risk management efforts to ensure status awareness, monitoring and control, and the deliverable products satisfy quality, performance, cost and schedule attributes.

The primary objectives of GAITS project management support methodology are to:

• Support the system community by conducting system analysis for all IT initiatives; DEVELOPMENT IGNORES PRE- AND POST-DEVELOPMENT PHASES, E.G.,
• ACQUISITION, MANUFACTURING AND CLOSEOUT
• Conduct formal internal assessments, evaluations and reviews focused on assessing the quality of the development process performance;
• Analyze system development adherence to the SDM, for example, by conducting support (e.g., quality and configuration management) activities;
• Support CCB meetings;
• Provide program management and contract administration support to our customer, project managers and contract managers;
• Perform CM, QA or IV&V;
• Review capital planning initiatives and evaluations for issues related to this project;
• Provide assessments of technical areas (e.g., gap analysis between requirements, design and testing) and programmatic areas, e.g., impact of system changes to cost, schedule, quality and performance.

The Project Management Institute’s “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide®) is a major source for the GAITS project management methodology.