Get Ready for TechStat

Many people in the government IT sector are aware of the Federal IT Dashboard. What you may not be aware of is the follow-on effort known as TechStat. I was invited to a recent TechStat meeting in which an investment that I have been a stakeholder on was reviewed. This particular investment has had a troubled history. But in its defense, it is a monumental project. It involves 5 different offices and will retire a legacy (mainframe) system. The number of moving parts is astronomical. This has given rise to a large number of fairly serious risks. Some of those risks have been avoided or mitigated, but some of them have been realized.

Anyway, this project was reported to the Federal IT Dashboard like all major investments. But this one stuck out like a sore thumb. It was re-baselined twice during fiscal year 2009. I think it is acceptable that if you re-baseline a project more than once, you should expect a higher degree of review and the CIO, Program and Project Managers certainly got it on this on.

I was surprised by Mr. Vivek Kundra. He asked very direct questions himself and clearly had an area of expertise that he was comfortable reviewing. My recommendation if you are ever required to participate in one of these TechStat reviews is that you be very prepared to respond to the PMBOK knowledge areas in detail. Mr. Kundra will hammer you on those areas. His staff was very knowedgeable about the connections to other related systems and the history concerning the budget and funding of the project.

In terms of preparation, do not try to develop a deck and think that you are going to be able to run through your show. Instead focus on the areas that you anticipate questions, develop a slide or two that will help you to answer that question. Because you will not be able to anticipate the order of the questions you must have an index to the content that you have prepared and be ready to jump around.

TechStat was potentially useful to the 15 or 20 other federal agencies that were there. Some common mistakes were identified and those stand a better chance of being avoided because of this review.