The Department of the Air Force's Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management is enhancing its approach to delivering the DAF BATTLE NETWORK with the adoption of an Integrated Product Team construct.
These changes, led by Maj. Gen. Luke Cropsey, head of the PEO, aim to improve collaboration, streamline processes and increase efficiency across the organization.
"The IPT construct is designed to address the challenges of integration, complexity and scale we're facing delivering the DAF BATTLE NETWORK," Cropsey said. "We'll create a consistent battle rhythm for implementation planning and synchronization, while integrating our mission engineering work and system architecture strategies with programmatic delivery."
Specifically, IPTs are designed to combat these five challenges:
- Horizontal Integration: Creating a mechanism to integrate at a DBN system-of-systems level.
- Complexity: Shifting complexity from the individual to the organization.
- Value Flow: Driving programmatic content via DBN architecture in a systematic way.
- Scale: Managing information flow to our vast stakeholder network at speed.
- Organize, Train and Equip: Leveraging consistent venues for knowledge-sharing to unleash the full potential of the organization.
The PEO C3BM IPT construct consists of two main components: Mission Increment IPTs and Stack IPTs.
The three Mission Increment IPTs (air, space and maritime) will use baseline-controlled mission threads to bind system-of-systems delivery with specific, concrete and time-constrained weapon system deliveries called increments. The Stack IPTs (software, data, processing and connectivity) will facilitate strategy and implementation planning for each layer of the DBN technical architecture we are responsible for deploying.
Work from the IPTs will flow into an already established DBN governance structure, before influencing work at the product-team level. Feedback from product teams will also work its way back to IPTs to complete a feedback loop.
Cropsey expects to name IPT leads in February, drawing from folks already assigned to C3BM and other DBN-supporting PEOs.
"We're not just talking about a new way of doing business, we're talking about a cultural shift," he said. "We need to move away from a mindset of 'my program, my system' and towards a mindset of 'our system, our mission.' The IPT construct is a crucial step toward ensuring the success of the DAF BATTLE NETWORK."
