In a twist on a highly-respected credential, CSC and a client —- the Defense Finance Accounting Service Technology Services Organization (DFAS-TSO) in Kansas City — have been jointly awarded a Level 3 rating against the Software Engineering Institute's capability maturity model (CMM) for software development.
The secret to success in this case was simple: CSC's close identification with the client's mission. This achievement exemplifies CSC's strong collaborative style and commitment to seamless integration of people and processes on behalf of our clients.

The Mission

The mission of CSC and DFAS-TSO in Kansas City is to develop and maintain five different information systems that collectively support the pay and personnel systems for the United States Marine Corps..
This collaborative effort resulted in a single-point-of-entry system that serves approximately 300,000 Marine Corps active and reserve personnel. Every unit commander in the Marine Corps worldwide now uses the same system and software to manage his or her troops. In fact, it's the only fully integrated pay and personnel system in the nation's armed services.
Although the Marines take pride in requiring only "three hots and a cot," the CSC and DFAS-TSO team knew they were entitled to much more. At the very least, the Marines deserved their paychecks — on time every time.
"There really is no room for error with these systems — transactions can't just blow up," says Bill Pedersen, Director of CSC's Navy/Marine Corps Systems Center. "A Marine in Kosovo or Somalia or Southwest Asia must focus on his mission there. He shouldn't be distracted by problems he or his family encounter with missing or lost paychecks or allotments."

A Collaborative Culture Change

Jointly awarding SEI Level 3 to client and contractor is unusual, but working with a profound commitment to teamwork is nothing new for the CSC staff at DFAS-TSO in Kansas City. After determining that a CMM Level 3 rating was a mutual goal, CSC and DFAS-TSO worked as an integrated product team to ready the site where 72% of its software engineers worked on the five systems to be evaluated.
Together, they identified areas where software development processes weren't integrated. Then they conducted training sessions with both CSC and DFAS software engineers on the deployment of integrated software development processes to meet CMM requirements.
"It involved knuckling down and putting a formality to matters to ensure consistency throughout the life cycle of the development process," says CSC Manager Gail Williams who led the CMM effort and training of both CSC and client personnel. Processes, procedures and standards for both client and CSC were integrated, formalized and publicized. " I think the experience was motivating for everyone involved," she adds. "People are empowered when they know what to expect."
Throughout the entire process, CSC and DFAS-TSO personnel worked side by side to document and measure their progress. "The more people were exposed to the CMM approach, the more they began to think and internalize those processes as a way of doing business — they began to live it!" Williams explains. The CMM-based evaluation took two weeks and resulted in the Level 3 assessment in December, ranking the CSC DFAS-TSO in the top quarter of assessed software-engineering organizations worldwide ."

A History of Achievement

The Level 3 achievement for the CSC DFAS team followed the Best of Breed award from the National Science Foundation given recently for the team's work on the Marine Corps Total Force System. And in 1999, the Gartner Group ranked the same integrated team in the top 1% of all groups in production of enterprise applications. As Bill Pedersen remarks, "We have passionate and methodical people here who truly practice critical thinking for a living. We are constantly monitoring our performance and requesting outside confirmation of our quality operation."

Final Thoughts and Lessons Learned

CSC's Site Manager Gary Hayes puts it in a nutshell: "Our philosophy here is simple - when the client succeeds, we succeed."
For Hayes, "Achieving SEI Level 3 does bring great recognition to our organizations and improves our ability to chase new opportunities, yet the assessment is not the most important thing. Our close cooperation with our client to produce excellent work, to develop our people, to improve our community and to support each other when in need is the real success to report in Kansas City."


March 2001