CANA Agile Business Practices Support Quick Turn Client Requirements for FUELED Ops

CANA Advisors recently had the pleasure of hosting the 2020 FUELED Ops Virtual Demonstration Day that showcased the evolving technology of Unmanned Logistics Systems (ULS). The event, initially planned as an in-person meeting, quickly transitioned into a virtual event due to the ongoing COVID-19 circumstances. Notwithstanding this quick turn decision, the synchronous event, which included a FUELED Ops overview, a live demonstration of ULS platforms, market research on commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), initial platform modeling and simulation scenarios and results, and an overview of NextStrategy, was a resounding success!

LtCol Brandon Newell, Director of SoCal Tech Bridge, Naval X and Director of Technology and Partnerships - Marine Corps Installations - West, entrusted CANA to host this event in a virtual format: “CANA’s ability to pivot from a live event to virtual event planning, facilitation, and execution was phenomenal. The unique nature of a distributed, virtual work force that is highly adaptable is a perfect partner for designing programs.”

CANA Advisors is a fully virtual company and has the tools and experience readily available to adapt to the unexpected and to bring an event like this from vision to reality. CANA used a variety of tools in execution of the FUELED Ops Virtual Demonstration Day, including Mural, JIRA, and Wix.

CANA used the website generator, Wix, for the event invitation and read ahead materials. Koa Beam, CANA Advisors’ Lead Graphic Artist, was pivotal in designing from an initial idea to building a great final visual product. "I love when a design requirement comes in, and how I can help when things need to be made quickly. When we had to change the Demonstration Day from an in-person to a virtual event, we were able to keep things moving and remain very agile in the marketing development of the final event product."

Koa also contributed to the project’s graphics and media support, building a 2D operational view with game pieces to display the operating area of an unmanned logistics system network to support future battlefield concepts. Graphics using these displays were important to socialize during this event as they will support continued discussions of ULS platform use in future FUELED Ops activities.

CANA needed a virtual, on-line platform to collaboratively and simultaneously capture multiple users’ inputs into event design, planning and coordination. We used Mural, a virtual whiteboard, to visually map out and plan the event. Mural has the ability to import website links, documents, photos, and graphics. This gave the planning team a visual representation of how the event was going to look and kept all of the key information in one place. Mural is one of CANA’s project management “go to” tools for collaborating on-line with clients and the CANA team. Our project managers are able to create templates to design, plan, and execute tasks for a project based on multiple contributors’ input, synthesize the collected data, and come to a decision faster than using other traditional techniques. Mural has proven to be outstanding for virtual collaboration and getting everyone on the same page. For the FUELED Ops Virtual Demonstration Day, in particular, we used sixteen different boards for planning, preparing, and executing the event. Mural provided all the links to the boards on a single dashboard and made it easy to access all the information.

CANA managed tasks for this event using JIRA software. JIRA is an issue and project tracking software for agile project management. The software allowed CANA to keep track of all tasks and assign team members, as needed, to maintain project progress based on the plan developed in Mural. By doing this, CANA was able to see live task tracking, which led to completing milestone dates on time.

CANA Advisors’ identity as a virtual and agile small business enabled it to fully support the FUELED Ops team effort to seamlessly transform the FUELED Ops Demonstration Day into a virtual event and allow our client to accomplish its mission. The tools and capabilities inherent in CANA’s daily operations allowed for timely, virtual collaboration and the task completion necessary to host a highly successful event.

#agilebusiness #navalx #fueledops #nextstrategy #canaadvisors

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By: Hannah Wallace

Hannah, a key Project Manager at CANA Advisors, played an instrumental role in designing, planning, and coordinating the FUELED Ops event and was pivotal to its success. She brings curiosity and commitment to CANA's project management practice - as demonstrated by her research and assessment of MURAL as a force multiplier to our client engagements - and she is a leader within our team often engaging and implementing new technologies and efficiencies. If you'd like to learn more about Hannah Wallace or CANA's project management practice, please reach out to her at hwallace@canallc.com.