What is Integrated Planning? (And How to be Successful at it!)
What is Integrated Planning? Integrated planning is a cross-functional process that ensures all stakeholders are involved at the right time to align priorities acros...
Decision Points
Welcome to the Decision Lens blog, where planning comes to roost and
change is always lurking around the corner.
Section 11204 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
What You Need to Know About Section 11204 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act The recently passed Infrastructure bill presents an unprecedented opportunit...
Bridging the Gap Between Data and Decisions
Have you been in this situation? On Monday leadership asks for a Friday presentation. There are many moving parts, manual processes, stakeholders playing different r...
Everything you need to know about PPBS
What is PPBS? The Planning Programming Budgeting System (PPBS), also frequently referred to as PPBE, is a resource allocation system that supports Department of Defe...
Becoming a Model for Modernized Services
Space Force, the newest branch of the Armed forces and the first completely digital agency in the United States released their digital vision in May. It outlines how...
Revolutionize Government Decision-Making
Dear Decision Lens Customers, Partners, and Prospects,
How to get to Better Reporting
Though private industry has made great strides automating their processes over the last 20 years, the public sector is still struggling with the same well- trodden m...
Innovation Lifecycles: How to Maximize R&D ROI Through Collaborative Decision Making
What is an Innovation Life Cycle? An “Innovation Lifecycle” is the different stages of the innovation process, including the conditions and factors that support each...
The Importance of Planning Across Multiple Time Horizons
The most effective planners track progress across multiple time horizons. These individuals are equipped to ensure the right investments are made at the right time t...
What is Government Innovation?
Innovation is a term that gets used quite often to mean various things. When talking about government innovation specifically, it is important to understand what it ...
Climate-Informed Decision-Making at the DoD
Federal News Network recently released an article regarding DoD’s mandated plan to consider climate change in upcoming decision-making. This is especially timely and...
What is Strategic Planning? | The Strategic Planning Process Revealed
What is Strategic Planning? Strategic planning is a form of organizational management that helps an organization define what it is, what it does, why it does what it...
Top 6 Tips to Getting Your Budget Approved
Across the Federal Government there are many challenges in getting to the point where a budget is ready for submission, including, time crunches in creating budgets ...
Providing Lifesaving Organ Transplants to our Nation
The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is the private, non-profit organization that serves as the nation’s Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) ...
POM Budget Planning 2.0: Reducing Risk and Ensuring Readiness
What is the POM cycle (Program Objective Memorandum cycle)? The Program Objective Memorandum (POM) is part of the Programming Phase of the Program, Planning, Budget,...
DL Labs: Investing in Employee Driven Innovation
Like Google and other silicon valley tech companies, Decision Lens has its own brand of time allotted so that developers can work on innovative projects that interes...
PPBE: Everything You Need to Know
What is PPBE? There are three processes (Acquisition, Requirements, and Funding) supporting the Defense Acquisition System. The Planning, Programming, Budget, and Ex...
Q&A from ASMC PDI Panel Modernizing DoD Financial Management Reporting
The push for real-time analytics across the DoD has reached a fever pitch. Though private industry has made great strides over the last 20 years, public organization...
Creating Excellence in Local IT Strategic Planning
How are different state and local entities handling the push for IT Centralization? What are some successes that have come about as a result of modernization and aut...
3 ways Automating Budgeting Formulations will Transform your Organization
Charneta Samms, Chief, Plans and Programs, Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM), Army Research Laboratory (ARL); and Gregory Little,Deputy Comptroller f...
Ensuring Readiness: Modernizing the PPBE Process
Layperson's Guide to Target Grading in Decision Lens
Decision Lens grades its plans because intuitively we know that making choices yields consequences. Our grading system is a way of measuring those “consequences” tha...
Midyear Review Reporting- An Insider's View
At our recent webinar, “Improve Mid-Year Review Reporting- An Insider’s View”, 316th Wing Inspector General Lt. Col. Benjamin Milarch and Decision Lens's Chris Harti...
How to Save Time and Resources During your Intake Process
Are you still sending and receiving dozens of Excel spreadsheets to keep track of your project submissions and requirements? Although most organizations still rely o...
Building Confidence in the S&T Process at USDA APHIS
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) program safeguards U.S. agriculture and natural resources against the...
5 Ways to Modernize your Science and Technology Planning
Now more than ever, S&T planners are tasked with the enormous challenge of rapidly solving for the world’s most pressing challenges and threats to security, heal...
Transformational Decision-Making: Where Data, Decision Science, and Technology Meet
Of the many stated priorities from DoD leaders over the past few decades, one in particular has simultaneously increased in both its importance and difficulty to acc...
Panel: Financial Management Challenges are Consistent Across the DoD
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UFR Process Modernization: Transitioning from UFR 1.0 to UFR 2.0
"The singular pain point in the process is really being able to line up true requirements in evaluating risks based on previously established goals or criterion." - ...
The Need to Balance Warfighting Assets, and Systems that Enable Them
“To be successful, the U.S. Air Force must continue its future design work and accelerate the evolution and application of its operational concepts and force structu...
Visual Planning
3 Hidden Business Impacts of Static Strategic Resource Planning
Project planning can be an exercise in futility. As soon as your best laid plans are mapped, a bump in the road steers you off course. Even the best project planners...
Implementing Tools and Processes: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
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How To Hire The Best Candidate Without Bias
The Link From Planning To Execution
How To Use GIS To Improve Capital Planning
The Art and Science of Agile Roadmap Planning
Time is Money: How To Gain It Back By Removing Value-Deficient Programs And Tasks
Using Decision Lens & Tableau To Make Critical (Geographical) Resource Decisions
R&D: Selecting And Evaluating Ideas As Priorities Shift
Leverage Your Most Critical Resource....People!
Adjusting Resources Quickly In Times Of Crisis
The New Reality There aren't enough hours in the day, dollars in the bank, or people on the floor these days. You've been the lucky one designated to keep things ...
Planning In A Virtual World
Is Continuous Planning A Smarter Move For Your Organization?
Continuous planning is not only smarter than event-based planning, it's easier!!! Event-based planning creates an annual cycle of ramping up effort for data collecti...
COVID-19: Why An Agile Planning Process Is More Important Than Ever
Written by John Saaty, CEO
Gut Check: It’s 2020, How Does Your Organization Defend Their Decision Making Without Data Driven Algorithms?
2020 Written by Bohdan Olinares
Customer Service Week Employee Recognition: Brent Peaden
We're Still Celebrating National Customer Service Week! To round out our interviews for the week, we met with Brent Peaden, a Senior Advisor on our Customer Success ...
Customer Service Week Employee Recognition: Sandra Murillo
National Customer Service Week Celebration Continues! Yesterday we highlighted the work of Analytics Advisor Marco Trigueros, in an insightful interview about the nu...
Customer Service Week Employee Recognition: Marco Trigueros
It's National Customer Service Week! Providing excellent customer service is something to strive for year round, but this week is an opportunity to celebrate the imp...
Do You Know What Your Project Portfolio Is Really Trying To Tell You?
Written by Bill Adams Amid this current Data Revolution, tech solutions to help you manage your massive amounts of project portfolio data everywhere. Some ev...
6 Benefits of Online Learning
Written by Katie Howell You've probably heard the advice that in order to be successful you have to "show up". But what does that mean in today's world? Wi...
To enhance strategic discipline and effectiveness, increase “strategy inclusivity”
Organizations often generate Strategic Plans to communicate the leadership’s objectives for the coming year or to convey a new vision. While these documents are typi...
When you have more information than resources: a QA with U.S. Air Force Academy Leader
Written by Jonathan Allen
The Top 4 Challenges with Stakeholder Engagement
Public sector planning is an art and a science. Part of the art is getting all the various stakeholders to effectively participate in the decision-making process. At...
The Top Question We Get From Prospects and How We Answer It
3 Easy Principles You Can Apply in Organizational Decision-Making Right Now
Decision Lens Pursues DoD Impact Level 4 Authorization
The Best Decision Makers of Our Day
Are You Able to Strategically Map Your Portfolio Planning Options like a Modern Day GPS?
Written by Sanjay Nayar
6 Steps for Effective Decision-Making
Give Your Planning Process Direction With These Criteria-Setting Best Practices
Written by Jared Smith
Transportation Challenges in Urban Areas, Solutions with Modern Software
Mass Transit has always been challenged by securing funding for all the maintenance, rehabilitation and new construction projects their communities need.
Management Solution for Breaking Down Silos
Silos are necessary for companies to function and keep accountability and responsibility among each other. They tend to form when information, focus, and control flo...
We're Celebrating the U.S. Army's 244th Birthday!
Every year on June 14, the United States Army celebrates its inception in 1775. Today, the Army consists of over one million active duty service members and an addit...
4 Signs You’re Not Allocating Resources Efficiently
Successful businesses are constantly finding ways to streamline costs, eliminate waste and improve profitability levels. Stakeholders want assurance that money is be...
Improving the State of Military Readiness
The DoD defines “readiness” as the ability of the U.S. military forces to fight and meet the demands of the National Military Strategy. It needs to be put in the con...
How To Establish Performance Measures Under the FAST Act Requirements
Collaborative Transportation Planning Governance The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), enacted in 2012, was devised to make the Federal sur...
The Modern Rules of Capital Planning in Public Works and Utilities
Capital planning tends to rely on very manual processes involving complex spreadsheets with data from disconnected sources. This often translates to a slow and cumbe...
Top Telecommunication Company Prioritizes IT Portfolio with Decision Lens
Making better business decisions is at the top of every successful business’ priority list. Decision Lens administers the collective knowledge of key stakeholders to...
Decision Lens and FedRAMP
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) provides the standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring f...
Effective Communication and Collaboration Critical for Strategy Execution
Great ideas are meaningless if they translate into countless hours of creating detailed business and strategic plans with no follow through. Execution is a critical ...
Structurally Deficient Bridges in the US Could Take 80 Years to Repair
More than 47,000 bridges in the US have been identified as “structurally deficient” and in need of urgent rehabilitation, according to a report from the American Ro...
We Picked Apart the Pain Points in Public Water Capital Planning and Here's What We Found…
With increased public pressures to protect water sources and supplies, countries are enforcing tougher water regulations and permit requirements. Exercising water co...
Leverage Strategic Decision-Making in Facility and Infrastructure Planning for Improved Resource Allocation
Strategic alignment and optimizing dollars to maximize the performance of investments across asset classes is critical in facilities and infrastructure-based decisio...
Elevate Your Facilities Planning Process
Facilities Planning decisions are more complex than ever. The long-term implications that come with costly facility capital expenditures make strategic decision-maki...
Want to be Amazing at Facility Resource Planning? Here's How!
Making agile, smart decisions with an analytic process drives the performance of your investments. Reducing facility costs, improving productivity and revenue genera...
Transforming Organizations Through Effective Strategy Execution
Organizations from all industries are investing in a new set of powerful software solutions focused on making smarter portfolio-level decisions. Executives are no lo...
Know-It-All's, Whiners and 800 Pound Gorillas in the Planning Process
Sometimes the hardest part of building the capital plan isn't massaging the numbers and prioritizing the projects. The most grueling challenge can be facilitating di...
Evaluating Risk & Reward in Innovation Project Selection
Our very own Kevin Connor was featured on an Innovation Enterprise webcast about “Evaluating Risk & Reward in Innovation Project Selection”. Click here for the r...
Emergency maintenance requests clouding your decision making?
Participate in a More Innovative Government
The Surprising Value of Intelligent Portfolio Planning
When you’re selling a software solution that most organizations haven’t ever heard of or seen before, you spend a lot of time evangelizing. You spend a lot of time ...
Gartner Case Study on Cost Cutting via Portfolio Management at Boeing
When technology is squarely at the center of your business differentiation, trying to find ways to cut costs OUT of technology can be an arduous and painful process,...
Start Your Strategy Execution Engine
Practitioner Series on Making Strategy Execution a Reality | Part 3 of 3 Part 1 | Part 2 Strategy Execution is a top-down process. It starts with a clear idea fro...
You Do Strategy. I’ll Do Execution.
Practitioner Series on Making Strategy Execution a Reality | Part 2 of 3 Part 1 | Part 3 It is very understandable (and common) to hear from clients “we really wa...
Collaborative Governance Can Be Your Friend
Practitioner Series on Making Strategy Execution a Reality | Part 1 of 3 Part 2 | Part 3 Governance – the overall structure and daily management of activities and ...
3 Ways to Boost Your Transportation Prioritization Process
Decision Lens has worked side by side with many Departments of Transportation throughout the years, and we’ve picked up a few helpful tips along the way when dealing...
Dependencies Release
Decision Lens is excited to announce a new feature set: Dependencies The new Dependencies features are designed to support the way organizations and MPOs anticipate ...
Decision Lens Proud and Excited to Partner with Maryville Technologies
The organizations we work with continue to struggle with some truly fundamental business needs. More often than not, these struggles center around their ability to a...
It’s an Exciting Year to be Sponsoring the 2017 Gartner Program & Portfolio Management Summit!
Contributed by Adam Boggess
New Feature! Harness Project Data with the New Data Import Wizard
Contributed by Michael Rahm
Decision Lens Covered Alongside Software AG in Forrester Report on Making Smarter Investment Decisions
The August 2016 Release is Live – Equipped with Enhanced Controls and Stunning Visualizations
Feature Spotlight – Negative Costs are Now Possible!
It is now easier than ever to specify costs for your alternatives and make use of our Suggest Schedule algorithm. Find and schedule your alternatives for the best ba...
Feature Spotlight: Bubble Chart
The Summer 2016 Release is Live!
The Summer 2016 Release is live! With this release, Decision Lens makes data collection faster, increases transparency, and provides new analytics for deeper insight...
A Spring Gift for You! The Decision Lens Spring 2016 Release is Live.
Contributed by Michael Rahm
Feature Spotlight: Value ROI
When making investment decisions, one of the most important factors is cost. If the cost is the leading criteria -- how you value that investment isn’t far behind in...
The Winter 2016 Release is Live!
Contributed by Michael Rahm