EY supports the Army from the headquarters to the battlefield

Creating a Digital POM Solution for the Modern Army

Army Futures Force Integrated Management (AFFIRM)

Army Futures Command (AFC) required a solution to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of programming and budget planning across the newly merged commands and support better decision-making across its diverse and complex portfolio. AFC retained a team from Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) to create a digital capability to support the Science and Technology (S&T) Program Objective Memorandum (POM). The objectives of this initiative were:

1. Standardized POM Data Capture

Create a single, streamlined and consistent interface that eliminated the need for emails and offline spreadsheets and enabled users to efficiently collect, analyze and report POM data

2. POM Traceability and Accountability

Establish clear governance of POM changes using an automated workflow, improve Course of Action (COA) version control, and drive accountability of bill payers and bill receivers to give visibility and traceability of POM moves

3. Improved POM Collaboration

Enhance visibility and transparency across all parties to allow for earlier and better review/feedback, including involvement of key stakeholders earlier in the review process via automated notifications of proposed POM changes

4. Intuitive POM Reporting and Dashboards

Preview the proposed POM in dashboards/reports that can be easily exported as slides/spreadsheets for presentation or additional analysis

5. Enhanced Decision-Making

Using portfolio management leading practices from industry, allow for rapid and transparent COA/scenario development based on different Army modernization priorities and organizational missions

Collection

AFFIRM is being used to collect POM22 S&T data enabling traceable, transparent and repeatable POM build. EY US support includes data collection, catalog of changes to bill payers and bill receivers, and automated workflow and notifications to improve transparency.

Analysis

AFFIRM supports the portfolio management analysis of the S&T portfolio for AFC. It aids in trade space analysis by prioritizing and then suggesting advanced scenarios based on weighted criteria, monetary constraints and investment interdependencies.

Reporting

AFFIRM has automated the creation of multiple key required POM outputs across the entire planning cycle. This includes briefings books, POM summary reports, interactive Power BI dashboards and portfolio prioritizations.

In support of these objectives, the EY US team implemented AFFIRM, the Army Futures Force Integrated Resource Management solution. Based on the Microsoft Project Portfolio Management (PPM) platform, AFFIRM includes components from the Microsoft commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) stack, including SharePoint, Project, Project Server, SQL Server and Power BI. AFFIRM is currently hosted in AFC’s Microsoft Azure Cloud infrastructure, dubbed the Modernization Application Development Environment (MADE). The first application migrated into the MADE infrastructure, AFFIRM is fully CAC enabled and has been running in production since November 2019. It has close to 200 users across more than a dozen subordinate commands and labs. 

AFC has leveraged the AFFIRM platform to automate the creation of multiple outputs across the entire POM planning cycle, including briefings books, POM summary reports, interactive Power BI dashboards and portfolio prioritization analyses. AFFIRM has also been used for data collection, analysis and reporting in key forums and senior leadership briefings.