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GCN Home > 04/19/04 issue

Col. Jacob Haynes - Defense: Mr. Fix-IT

By Dawn S. Onley, GCN Staff

Haynes has a reputation as a turnaround specialist on troubled programs

Army Col. Jacob Haynes is a program fix-it man. When he took over as project manager for the Transportation Coordinators’ Automated Information for Movement System II in the late 1990s, the program was falling apart.

TC-AIMS II was behind schedule and over budget, its requirements muddled. The Joint Defense Department system operates as part of the Global Combat Support System to plan, execute and track deployment of people and equipment.

Haynes organized the office, focused on defining the requirements and software engineering, and developed a better relationship with the contractor, said Kevin Carroll, program executive officer for Enterprise Information Systems at Fort Belvoir, Va.

“Jake Haynes is known as a turnaround specialist,” said Carroll, his boss. “Jake brought management and engineering discipline to the program.”

After a rocky start, TC-AIMS II became one of the success stories in Iraq, Carroll said, a change he largely attributed to the reorganization Haynes brought to the program.

The same can be said for the Standard Procurement System, an automated contracting system that standardizes procurement processes across DOD, Carroll said.

“SPS had the same reputation. It was a joint program that couldn’t agree to the requirements. It looked like the program was crashing,” Carroll said.

Then Haynes was asked to head SPS and began working his magic, Carroll said.

“If I had a program in trouble, Jake would be the guy I would always want to go to,” Carroll said. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s two for two.”

With SPS, Haynes said, “the first thing we did was to completely re-engineer our software development process. We changed our process for testing, allowing the services to be more involved. We decentralized testing to go out in the field in real time. That changed the situation.”

When Haynes came on board, testing took up to six months per iteration. It now takes 60 days, he said.

“This is really software development 101. We’re trying to emulate a commercial model,” Haynes said.

Another measure of success, user satisfaction, was at an all-time low about three years ago, when the General Accounting Office de-livered a scathing report on the $582.5 million program.

DOD temporarily halted the program, and Haynes, just a month into the job as program manager for SPS, found himself in front of Congress testifying on his remedy for the embattled program. His solution looked a lot like his remedy for TC-AIMS II: Define software requirements, improve user satisfaction and emulate commercial best practices.

“We have actually used the GAO report, not as a hindrance, but a tool to get better,” Haynes said.

Haynes’ functional division chief, Linda Beckner, organized a monthly newsletter that gives users frequent updates on SPS. The electronic newsletter gets about 10,000 hits a month, she said. Now, Haynes says, “eight out of 10 users are happier.”

The program has about 28,000 users at 308 locations worldwide. At full operational capability, expected in 2006, SPS will replace more than 70 legacy systems at 801 sites worldwide.

In fiscal 2003, SPS was used by more than 23,000 contracting workers to purchase more than $48 billion in goods and services.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, troops in Kuwait and Qatar used a stripped-down version of SPS called the Battle Ready Contingency Contracting System. The system was deployed on notebook PCs, speeding supplies to troops by bringing procurement officers closer to the front lines.

Gino Magnifico, deputy program manager for SPS, calls the system “contracting’s face to the warfighter.”

Magnifico said he started with SPS early in its development and the difference between the system from then to now “is like night and day.”

“The requirements process was greatly enhanced. Users determine what gets into the software. A lot of that has to do with Col. Haynes coming in,” Magnifico said. “Everything is much more disciplined in the process.”
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