A new Government Accountability Office report calls on
the Navy to follow best business practices as it develops
a new enterprise resource planning system in order to
avoid the costly failure of four earlier pilot projects.
Navy has begun to merge the four pilots after sinking $1
billion into them without marked improvement in day-to-day
operations since implementation began in 2000, according
to GAO-05-858.
It said that so far the estimated $800 million project –
through 2011 – is running smoothly and praised the central
program office for learning from past mistakes and “being
committed to the disciplined processes necessary to
manage this effort.”
Navy ERP project managers – uncharacteristically for
systems projects GAO has studied at the Department of
Defense in general – have been “following an effective
process for identifying and documenting requirements,” GAO
said.
It said one improvement is a strong emphasis on requirements
management, critical because requirements make up the
blueprint that developers and program managers use to
design, develop, test and implement a system.
However, the ERP as currently planned will not provide an
all-inclusive, end-to-end corporate solution, leaving out
aviation and shipyard depot activities for example, according
to GAO.
It said the Navy faces daunting tasks to move forward, such
as developing and implementing 44 system interfaces with
other Navy and DoD systems, as well as converting data from
legacy systems.
Given DoD’s past inability to implement business systems as
promised, GAO called for an independent verification and
validation function, which it considers a best practice,
rather than relying on in-house subject matter experts
and others within the project.
