The Heilmeier Catechism

I’ve been sitting on this one for awhile. I read it in July 2016 and meant to share it with the cohort in October and forgot about it. This blog challenge reminded me of it and I thought I’d share.

Background

In July 2016, DARPA published a whitepaper on how innovation happens at DARPA. Given that DARPA might just be one of the most innovative places on Earth, they seem to know what they are talking about.

Relevance to you?

Two parts (and probably more). Building a business case to innovate and the catechism I refer to in the title.

The Business Care

The whole paper is filled with great examples, but the ‘money’ portion of the entire paper comes around pg 14.

This page starts to discuss how leaders within DARPA must choose which ambitious proposals to support internally. It’s a demanding process to make a case (as it should be for the level of investment). A program manager gave some background on how he built his case.

This could be a starting point for us, within our agencies, to build our case. At least it’s a recipe…take what you need, alter as you will, pinch where you can..you get it.

As the PM says…

When [building his case], he spends large amounts of time on background learning, interacting with stakeholders inside and outside the DoD, building a case for why an investment will lead to significant outcomes and for why DARPA is the right agency to pursue the effort.

He continues…

[DARPA infrastructure] forces PMs to refine thinking at every stage. Once [the present to leadership], our new ideas are very refined and we are ready for the highest quality scrutiny that money can buy

We’ve heard a lot of the first quote through the last couple months during training. Cool to see it in another place happening as well.

In the second quote, depending on your role, switch ‘PM’ with ‘CO’.

It also says to me…find a few people who can critically tear your idea apart…it will make you better on the back end.

I don’t do that enough. My ambition is usually 40 yards in front of my current plan. I need to refine, build, tinker, and then go to leadership.

Heilmeier Catechism

This is my favorite part of the paper. Apparently ‘Heilmeier’ refers to George Heilmeier, DARPA’s director in the 70’s. The catechism refers to a set of questions that had to be answered on every proposed new program. As the paper states, the questions seem obvious, but I think we are usually too busy to really evaluate each.

I’ll list the questions below the are included in the catechism, but the first is the one I think is the most valuable.

What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.

This is perfect for digital services. Things can get complex. It can be hard to imagine what someone really wants with a hundred word description full of jargon.

The best example I can think of this would be…(I going to make up fancy jargon sounding words to get my point across here)

Objective brought to your desk

Need: Imperceptible, ethereal, and vaporous technological enhancement for a platform XYW 53 tanker….

(you get it…)

Using the catechism

Need: Harry Potter invisibility cloak for a tank.

You should have a better understanding of what I want than that gobble mess…right?

So maybe start asking your technical team to not email you their requirement, or print it out, but to bring it over on a standard issue sticky note. They will have limited space to write it and most likely won’t waste that small space using jargon that only confuses things.

That should make for a better start to the project.

The other questions in the catechism:

• How is it done today, and what are the limits of the current practice?
• What’s new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
• Who cares? If you’re successful, what difference does it make?
• What are the risks and payoffs?
• How much will it cost?
• What are the midterm and finals ‘exams’ to check for success?

Obvious right?

Sure, we already ask about costs, but imagine asking those pointed – but needed! – first three bullets? Straight to the heart of it.

Good stuff! Here is the link the paper. Hope you enjoyed and found use this post.

Stephen

The Inevitable

On the flight home from our second on site training, I downloaded a book on my Kindle to pass the time. I’ve been a longtime reader of Wired magazine and follower of the original Editor of Wired Kevin Kelly. Kelly recently wrote a new book about 12 technological forces that will shape our future. His writing on changing technology, new ways of working, and changing long held beliefs centered around technology was a perfect fit for many of the discussions in our cohort. You may not see the ‘apples-to-apples’ similarities I do, but hopefully some of the highlights I share below will ring a bell for you in some manner. I’ve decided to highlight and discuss a few below, but will also leave most of my highlights at the bottom. Maybe some of those ring more true for you? Let me know in the comments.

To be clear, this book is not about government or procurement, but commercial technology. I just think there are parallels…enjoy

Banning the inevitable usually backfires. Prohibition is at best temporary, and in the long counterproductive.

In the context of this class, ‘Banning” may be too harsh a word, but the spirit holds true in that we have spoke at length in this class about either direct management or senior management being hesitant to change, no matter the trending examples of success using agile and other digital services strategy seen around the government. And their desire to sit tight and wait to have their hand forced to change is only delaying the procurement team’s ability to start tinkering, trying, failing (in the productive way), and ultimately succeeding.

A better example would be agencies adoption of social media. It was banned  or prohibited by agencies for use at first, but after the trends and success stories were everywhere, the use by a late-adopting agencies was without much reward. This is not to say a late-adopting agency can’t stand above the fray in the social space, but now citizens and employees are already asking…what’s next? At some point in this training, we’ve heard of solicitations requiring a YouTube submittal as part of the vendor’s response…good example of pushing the social media limits.

All these miraculous inventions are waiting for that crazy, no-one-told-me-it-was-impossible visionary to start grabbing the low-hanging fruit

It would seem that this quote encompasses so many aspect of this class. The innovative evaluation techniques used by 18F that we’ve learned about would seem impossible to many 1102s. But procurement doesn’t have to be hard…there is low-hanging fruit…and it takes the mentality of…let me just try something!

Cognified laundry—Clothes that tell the washing machines how they want to be washed. The wash cycle would adjust itself to the contents…

This seems unrelated, I know, but let me explain.

It goes somewhat hand-in-hand with the second quote above. When I read that line in the book, I thought, “You have to be *#^$% me!”…but think about all the technology that has come along in just the last couple years that a previous version of yourself would have never believed.

I think it can be the same in digital services and strategy. There is going to be a “you have got to be *&#@*& me!” moment in procurment in this space soon…wouldn’t it be cool if you were on that team?

On our call yesterday with Janine Gianfredi, there was ‘crazy talk’ about writing a solicitation Twitter-style…140 characters. Maybe the solicitation can’t be 140 characters (or can it???), but maybe the sections are each 140 characters? And the market research is crowdsourced on Twitter in 140 characters?

With all you know about changes and technology…would you really be surprised? Really?

I hope you found value in the quotes shared above. Let me know in the comments. And certainly check out the book – The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape Our Future.

As referenced initially, here are some other quotes that I thought had value to this class (again, to be clear, this book is not about government or procurement, but commercial technology. I just think there are parallels. The below are highlighted quotes from the book.

• We are morphing so fast that our ability to invent new things outpaces the rate we can civilize them.
• The kind of inevitability I am speaking of here in the digital realm is the result of momentum.
• It may be against our initial impulse, but we should embrace the perpetual remixing of these technologies.
• No matter how long you have been using a tool, endless upgrades make you into a newbie—the new user often seen as clueless.
• Endless Newbie is the new default for everyone, no matter your age or experience.
• The problems of today were caused by yesterday’s technological successes
• Any promising new invention will have its naysayers, and the bigger the promises, the louder the nays.
• Once you confront the fact that it works, you have to shift your expectation of what else there may be that is impossible in theory but might work…