How Rapid Design Workshops Help LMP Work

By U.S. ArmySeptember 7, 2018

Rapid Design Workshops (RDW) are inherently collaborative environments where teams come together in-person to discuss technical issues and provide feedback on requirement needs and solution options. For a complex system like the Logistics Modernization Program (LMP), RDWs are critical for determining approaches to define solution-versus-requirement fits and gaps and identify opportunities where the customer can agree to change existing business processes to meet a requirement. The RDWs also clarify process descriptions that support thorough testing and ultimately determine the path forward for implementing new or enhanced capabilities to the LMP system. Additionally, the RDWs help establish relationships among the cross-functional teams that attend, which stave off substantial changes to system design by engaging the right combination of experts early in the design process.

During recent enhancement initiative RDWs, the LMP product management office and its lead systems integrator partner, the Communications -- Electronics Command Software Engineering Center Army Shared Services Center, customers and functional, technical and data experts dispersed 12 high-level enhancement requirements into over 150 sub-elements. In all, the team detailed an average of seven requirements per day during the RDWs, which spanned 24 business days. The team then broke into groups to discuss approaches and methodologies to address nearly 120 requirement sub-elements aligned with specific LMP business processes. Before the RDWs ended, the entire team concurred on solution alternatives and finalized approaches to ensure work can be completed within scope.

While the LMP RDW methodology isn't unique, its innovation comes from years of refinement. The LMP product management office has found a balance of engaging the right cross-functional groups and using the right project management principles, which have consistently resulted in leader, stakeholder and customer buy-in on decisions while gaining strategic direction on issues in order to resolve them quickly and efficiently. In the end, LMP RDWs enable team members from across the enterprise to play an important part in maintaining and enhancing the system and minimizing customization, which ensures projects are successful and continues to make LMP work for Soldiers around the world.