An official website of the United States government Here's how you know

LMP's Balancing Act

By Ms. Christine McMahon (LMP)January 11, 2016

LMP Balancing Act
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

Delivering to customers while managing competing priorities is a careful balancing act that the Logistics Modernization Program (LMP) Product Management Office (PMO) faces every day. The PMO proudly serve as the fulcrum that balances the lever of delivering Increment 1 functional and financial enhancements and Increment 2 deployments to the customer and overseeing program management for transitioning application sustainment services to the Army Shared Services Center (SSC) and migrating the system enterprise environment to Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), as well as overseeing budgets, audits, and milestone requirements.

The way the PMO has been successful is through its people, processes, and relationships. The PMO has consistently found creative ways to address even the smallest details to answer customers' needs and has carefully made decisions, analyzing and understanding short- and long-term effects for both the PMO and customers. And the PMO has always put its people first.

Organizations that succeed over time are people-centered and have a strong values-driven culture. Success means having a team that is motivated, committed, and uses its talents to best serve both ends of the lever. Success also means sharing concerns and problems in a way that allows the team to work together toward resolution and enables the right people (and organizations) to jump in and help. The LMP is organized with the right mix of people charged with implementing strategy and those responsible for implementing functionality. This mix effectively evens out the PMO's integrated efforts to make LMP happen, both functionally and administratively, every day.

In the end, customers' needs are the PMO's needs, and Army and Department of Defense (DoD) programmatic requirements are the PMO's requirements. The LMP team must deliver on both. The objective, then, as the fulcrum in the "serving customers" and "program management" equation, is to inspire a shared vision of what LMP is and what it will be by balancing deliverables, deadlines, and dollars.