Enterprise Risk Management

ars specializes in enterprise risk management design and implementation for the following domains.

Portfolio risk management
Program risk management
Project risk management
Operations risk management
- IT operations and cybersecurity
- Production operations
- Finance & business operations
- Supply chain
- Infrastructure
- Engineering
- Mission assurance
- Safeguards and security
- Emergency services/continuity of operations (COOP)
Internal controls risk management

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them

- Albert Einstein

Bottom-up and top-down, Top 10 enterprise risk process (threats & opportunities)

Risk burn-down reporting

The primary benefit of brakes on a vehicle is not that they allow you to stop; they enable you to go fast. Risk management is analogous to the brakes on a vehicle. It enables organizations to go fast. Organizations without effective Enterprise Risk Management have a self-imposed speed limit.

Portfolio Management

ars staff can assist with your most challenging portfolio management problems.

Portfolio strategic plan and charter

Portfolio management plan

Strategic objectives
Governance
Scope
Stakeholders
Resources
Risk management
Performance management: top threats & opportunities, risk burn-down reporting, risk informing the components, risk modeling
Financial management
Change management
Quality management
Requirements & compliance

Determining the portfolio components

Establishing the risk appetite and tolerance

Monitoring & controlling processes

Portfolio balancing

Effective portfolio management requires balancing threats and opportunities to achieve strategic objectives.

The value of a portfolio is derived from its components, typically projects, programs, and production operations. The portfolio itself creates no value, which emphasizes the importance of selecting its components.

Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.

– Warren Buffett

Program & Project Management

Program management coordinates multiple related projects to achieve strategic objectives and deliver benefits. It involves the following processes that ensure these projects are aligned, managed cohesively, and contribute to the organization's overarching goals.

Program planning
Scope
Governance
Stakeholder engagement
Communications
Quality management
Risk management
Requirements management
Financial planning
Procurement
Benefits management
Lifecycle management
Integration
Resource management

The seeds of failure are sown at the beginning of a project due to poor project planning.

50% of all projects fail
70-80% of a project’s cost is committed when less than 10% has been expended
Discovering a requirement after the product has been deployed can lead to a cost increase of 1,000 times or more than if it had been identified during requirements development

We can do better!

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

– George S. Patton

Artificial Intelligence

Standards-based artificial intelligence implementation

Lessons learned

Integration into business processes

Risk associated with AI implementation

Concepts & terminology

Governance

Management

Software considerations

Data considerations

Infrastructure considerations

Skill sets required

Testing and evaluation

Sustainment

Security

Ethics

Reporting/dashboards

If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly.

- David Hackworth

Engineering Services

Systems engineering
- Requirement validation and verification
- TRL and MRL maturation
- Analysis of alternatives
- Configuration management
Research & development
- Pilot plant design and demonstration
- Lessons learned and applied
- Front-end engineering design
- External collaboration research services
- Technology research and applications engineering
- Equipment inspection & verification
- Procurement & construction
Mechanical & process engineering
- Aerospace propulsion, rockets, and missile design & production
- Facility engineering
- HVAC
- Hazardous environments
- Explosible materials
- Viscous materials
- Automation and remote operations
- Process startup & commissioning
- Flight certification
Construction management

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.

– Vernon Law

Strategic Planning & Deployment

Synthesizing the vision

Documenting the current state

Defining the desired future state

Deploying the strategy to achieve the future desired state

Reducing strategy to tactical action and developing R2A2s

In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.

- Steve Case

Organizational Design

Capability & capacity development

Lean leadership

Position descriptions

Roles, responsibilities, authorities, and accountabilities (R2A2)

Responsibility assignment matrix (RAM)

Compensation

Behavioral competencies

Technical competencies

Professional development