Integrated Personnel and Pay System — Army (IPPS-A) leaders shared insights about how they approach software acquisition during the organization's first Broadcast to Industry event on Oct. 10.
More than 200 people tuned into the virtual event designed to help industry understand how they can support IPPS-A.
“You have a commitment from me to engage you about new business opportunities early and often,” said Col. Matthew Paul, IPPS-A’s project manager. “My goal is to provide you with a minimum of 18-months’ notice before we embark on a new procurement action, so you can align your bid-and-proposal resources.”
Industry partners “are critical to our success,” said Patrick McKinney, IPPS-A’s deputy project manager. “We want you to better understand our requirements, so you are better equipped to respond to our requests for proposals.”
Lt. Col. Ryan Martin, product manager for IPPS-A Increment II, and Valarie Tran, product lead for Accessions Information Environment (AIE), discussed two procurement opportunities that will be released as task orders under the Army’s new Modern Software contract vehicle.
IPPS-A is recompeting a capability support procurement to sustain and enhance a PeopleSoft software platform. Eligible offerors should know Agile and have a history of supporting software development for PeopleSoft capabilities. A contract award is projected in October 2025 with a January 2026 start date.
AIE is seeking an industry partner that understands Agile software development methodologies and has a history of low-code, no-code development on a Salesforce software-as-a-service platform. “We are going to buy teams that will support the follow-on AIE missions after we complete the enlisted recruiting mission,” Paul said, noting that a task order award is projected in mid-to-late fiscal year 2025.
Eight key takeaways from the event are summarized below.
1. IPPS-A adopts return-on-investment (ROI) thinking.
“Our budgets may have increased, but they have not kept pace with the rate of inflation,” Paul said. “I constantly ask myself: How can I extract $2 to $3 of value for every new dollar I spend?”
“We have to make sure that we are effectively and efficiently using our funds to deliver value to the Soldier,” echoed Martin.
2. IPPS-A embraces modern software-acquisition practices.
Recent Army software acquisition reforms championed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Data, Engineering and Software) Jennifer Swanson support Agile practices, modern testing, modular contracting, modular architectures and flexible requirements.
“I have seen more software acquisition reform in the Army in the last 18 months than the past 18 years,” Paul said. “It is truly an exciting time to be in this business.”
3. AIE reboot yields results.
The Accessions Information Environment (AIE) program rebooted last year. “Everything is different,” Paul said. “We are maximizing out-of-the-box solutions. We pivoted from waterfall to Agile. And we have a brand-new contracting strategy and a new paradigm. We are badgeless.”
AIE has developed working software that is in production with early adopters from the Ohio National Guard Recruiting Battalion. “Right now, we are a small snowball, and we just started rolling down the hill,” Paul said. “Success will breed success,” added Tran.
4. Requirements need to be flexible.
“Requirements need to be high level and flexible,” Paul said.
AIE has an approved capability needs statement (CNS), Paul said. “Every three months, we are decomposing CNS requirements into features and user stories. We are prioritizing and reprioritizing our backlog as user demands change and Army priorities evolve.”
“We do not write requirements,” Paul said. “We do not approve requirements. Functional representatives write and prioritize our requirements.”
The Army G-1 is IPPS-A’s functional. The U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) is AIE’s functional.
“We work with our functionals every single day through our Scaled Agile Framework,” Paul said. “Every three months, we revisit the requirements and our backlog. And we rack and stack and change our priorities based on user feedback and the evolving mission.”
5. Agile software development requires modular contracts.
“We need modular contract structures that are aligned to flexible requirements and our Agile software development process,” Paul said. “Our new Army Military Pay (AMP) contract is a great example of a modular software development contract.”
“The AMP contract is predicated on working software — that we will always have working software in production,” Paul said. “And it is structured around three-month increments, with planning at the front end and a retrospective at the back end, with two-week sprints in between. Within the three-month period, we are constantly evaluating contractor performance. And every three months, we reprioritize as necessary. The intent is to always remain centered around customer value.”
AMP “will start with a focus on one-time payments, like death gratuities, adoption reimbursements and temporary lodging allowances,” Martin said. “That allows us to get the capability in the field, test hypotheses and continue to enhance it.”
6. IPPS-A requires open APIs.
“The IPPS-A system has 67 data trading partners,” Paul said. “I have 67 unique system interface agreements. It is really hard to manage, and it creates a lot of overhead. I have an entire data team. I have an entire infrastructure that just does data things for IPPS-A, and it is really antithetical to the data mesh doctrine. It inhibits a program’s ability to be Agile. It constrains your velocity. Data Mesh and its Unified Data Reference Architecture (UDRA) allows you to keep pace with your customer and deliver value. We have to pivot to UDRA. We have to get to an open Application Programming Interface (API) strategy.”
7. IPPS-A focuses on enhancing the user experience.
“We are focused on two separate things,” Martin said. “One, how can we make the software more intuitive, easier to use? Two, how can we provide a modern look and feel that’s just more enjoyable to use?”
“Our customers get frustrated when they need to push a lot of buttons to complete workflows,” Paul said. “They get frustrated when they need to conduct formal training on software just to get to a level of proficiency to make that software usable,” he added, noting that a typical Soldier has to traverse 10 or more disparate information systems or software applications and doesn’t have time to develop expert proficiency in each one.
“We need to make it easy on the Soldier via an intuitive user interface and the implementation of AI to automate tasks,” Paul said. “Many of our COTS providers are starting to bake AI solutions into their respective tech stacks. Very soon, AI will deliver value to our customers in the form of digital assistance to help them prioritize their work and co-pilot workflows.”
8. IPPS-A shifts to government-owned CI/CD pipelines.
AIE and IPPS-A employ government-owned, contractor-operated continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines comprised largely of COTS tools. The government team maintains direct contracts with the tool providers and all the associated licensing agreements.
“IPPS-A maintains configuration control over our own pipelines from end to end,” Paul said. “In the past, a contractor system integrator would own their own pipeline from end to end. The intent behind this change is not only to bolster cybersecurity, but to also put the government in the driver's seat or at least the front-passenger seat, enabling the government to maximize competition and not stay married to just one contractor over our entire software development lifecycles.”
IPPS-A leaders’ advice for industry
“Our industry partners need to be obsessed with making our end users happy,” Paul said. “They also need to be flexible, open and transparent. Having a partner that is willing to tell it like it is — that’s what I value the most.”
“We are buying capacity, and that requires different thinking from vendors — especially in a multi-vendor environment,” Martin said. “Teamwork becomes extremely important. Relationships become extremely important. Our partners need to focus on delivering value. Our AMP contract incentivizes vendors in the same way that a rise in tide raises all ships. So, if we are delivering valuable software to the field, everyone's going to benefit.”
“We have functional teams, development teams and subcontractors,” Tran said. “We are all operating in a seamless, badgeless mindset that requires transparency, communication and a common operating model.”
“You are going to be seeing a lot more of these badgeless arrangements moving forward,” Paul said. “We own the CI/CD pipeline. And that pipeline and our Agile practices are the glue that hold the team of teams together. We align to a common process, a common lexicon and the common tools within our pipelines. It enables us to increase competition, get other vendors into the team and expand our tent. It's a new paradigm.”
Links
- IPPS-A Broadcast to Industry slide deck
- IPPS-A Broadcast to Industry video
- PEO Enterprise Industry Meeting Request webform