New WashingtonExec Series:
WashingtonExec reached out to executives in the government contracting community for their predictions regarding what to expect in 2012 as the federal government looks to significantly increase its adoption of mobile technologies.
Today’s outlook is from Cal Shintani, Chief Growth Officer of Oceus Networks.
At Oceus Networks, we’ve had several opportunities to participate in mobility pilots or exercises. Here are a few of our lessons learned:
- Provide strong definition of exercise or pilot goal. Define what result(s) achieve “success” for the pilot.
- Understand spectrum or bandwidth requirements. For example, with the DoD, we’ve worked with them to get experimental licenses to conduct an exercise using 4G LTE spectrum. This also applies to agencies that don’t have wi-fi reaching throughout their buildings.
- Understand number and operating systems of devices to be used in the pilots. If the goal of the pilot is device interoperability, that’s great. Otherwise, you may want to consider limiting different types of devices – as that just increases pilot complexity.
- An increasing number of devices increases cost of your pilot.
- Consider device spectrum capabilities. For pilots using spectrum in remote areas, many commercially available devices might not work.
- Assume users of your pilots will start developing their own applications. Develop a concept of operations to incorporate this (as well as planning for increased use and need for bandwidth).
- Determine next steps after a successful exercise or pilot.
I’ve been able to talk with many people in both government and industry about mobility issues, including lessons learned on mobility pilots. Here are some of their key points:
- Create a business case prior to your pilot.
- Determine how you plan to define pilot ROI.
- Develop training for pilots. There’s nothing worse than a pilot being declared unsuccessful. because the users weren’t properly trained
- Allow creativity during the pilot.