Use Case #1: Optimization of
Barrel Workflows

*Unfortunately, due to the strict NDA of my current employer, I cannot share the actual customer journey maps that we designed here. But below is a brief summary of the project.

Introduction

Problem Statement:

In the fall of 2021, my UX Team was personally asked by the government Program Manager at that time, to produce a deliverable that could sell the benefits of the CAMPS Inc. 1 program to the Upper Management government/military stakeholders.

Solution:

The solution was a Customer Journey Map in order to visually illustrate the heavy manual processes of the Legacy workflows users are forced to do and compare how CAMPS Inc. 1 optimizes those workflows with several key insights to significantly reduce inefficiency and save the military hours of manual labor as well as millions of dollars per year. We ended up producing 10 Customer Journey Maps for 3 different roles, the USTC Validator, the Tanker Barrel and the Airlift Barrel.

Team

• The Subject Matter Expert was my co-partner in working on these Customer Journey Maps*

• Product Owner and Jr. UX Designer supported us when needed

Role and Responsibilities

My co-partner and I ended up spending a total of almost 200 hours on these projects because no one was around anymore that intimately knew these roles’ Legacy workflows, so we needed to go into the base (Scott Air Force Base, IL) to observe and ask questions about their Legacy workflows. Once we gathered as much data as we could, we came back to organize and visually illustrate these Legacy workflows. Our SME and I then went to the Product Owner on the team that supported the Barrels to nail down the functionality CAMPS Inc. 1 provided and how that solves a lot of the user’s pain points and frustrations.

Conclusion:

The Customer Journey Maps produced were so effective and successful, the deliverables were handed over to the AMC in order to be briefed up the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense exemplifying how CAMPS Inc. 1 is saving the military time & money by optimizing their workflows over manual Legacy processes.

All of the users had identical frustrations and pain points:

1. High cognitive burden - spreadsheets had macro development which required manual maintenance

2. High probability of human errors

3. Spreadsheets “shared” with multiple users

4. Manual data input from external systems (extremely labor intensive)

5. Usually one role (rotated) would be “in charge” of spending several hours a day first thing in the morning updating spreadsheets with updated data

6. No automated/Integration with external systems

7. Steep learning curve for personnel

8. Multiple applications open at once plus reports etc.

9. One “owner” of the spreadsheet - “Single point of failure”

Camps Inc. 1 Solutions:

1. Integration & Access to all external database systems with the goal of having 1 application that can house and “talk” to any external system (Partners)

2. Real-time data updates for all users

3. Synced updates & notifications system alerting users to those changes/updates in realtime

Specific Insights: CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP #1 & #2 — AR USTC VALIDATOR:

The Validator’s role is to approve and “validate” if a requirement is feasible for the Air Force to support. Ideally, the final decision would be made from well-informed analysis in order to support whether Air Force has the necessary assets to support that requirement for Air-Refueling. The Air Refueling side of the Air Force is much smaller than Airlift and Tankers are constantly overbooked & overused because the demand is always too high to support high-priority missions, Coronet movement around the world (aka “Fighter Jets”) as well as supporting exercises for training etc. Ideally the Validator’s role analyzes the requirement(s) before it gets to the Barrels so the Barrels don’t waste time figuring out how to support a mission that should not ideally be supported.

Some Key Insights Surfaced During Analysis:

• Over 13 steps in 6 hours/day spent on manual data entry between multiple systems into a spreadsheet in order for the data to be “updated.”

• CAMPS Inc. 1 reduced Time on Task down to approximately 30 minutes

• Now the Validator can spend more time validating based on well-informed analysis to make their decision verses manual Legacy processes

Specific Insights: CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP #3-10 — Tanker & Airlift Barrels:

Both Barrels have similar Legacy workflows that also required heavy manual maintenance of their spreadsheets as the “Source of Truth.” Their main tasks is to allocate & task Wings to fulfil and support mission requirements. However, in order to make these decisions, they require heavy internal analysis beforehand that requires hours of working through what they call the “Tetrus game” of constantly shifting around assets to support missions. The very real challenges of moving assets around when top priority missions come down in short notice or tails break down in execution and missions’ schedules are delayed, etc., the Barrel has an enormous responsibility in allocation/tasking of the “right” assets before it gets to Mission Planning.

Some Key Insights Surfaced During Analysis:

• Tanker Barrel — “Typical” (we say that and laugh because over 70% are “custom” scenarios with this role), scenario of Allocating 4 Units (4 Tankers) for a Mission can take anywhere between 28-98 minutes with 56-76 steps involved.*

  * Depends of course on single vs. multi-msns, 1 Tanker verses 20 Tankers make a huge difference in manual & repetitive workflows which increase cognitive burden. Calculations are for 1 Long Range Barrel & 1 Short Notice Barrel

• Airlift Barrel —similar workflows Approximately 6 Man Hours/Day (1560 Man Hours/Year)

• CAMPS Inc. 1

  • reduces Tanker workflow to about 6-12 minutes (between 9-16 steps involved)
    *The reason why reduction in minutes and steps is because CAMPS Inc. 1 eliminates manual emailing, phone & spreadsheet workflows

  • reduces Airlift workflow (conservatively) more than 50% (3+hrs/day) because 50% of the old Legacy workflows are eliminated with the new standardized consolidated platform
    

FINAL CONCLUSION:

These deliverables were so successful that they were escalated up through the “Chain of Command” within the AMC to the Secretary of Defense to be briefed on the success of CAMPS Inc. 1 progress. We confirmed that once users have been transitioned into the application, the Air Force is estimated to be saving about $3.1 million per year.

Future Steps:

At that time, the government came back to us to ask for Customer Journey Maps for every single role in the application (which is about 40+ user roles). This process was so extensive for my team, I actually had to do our our “analysis” to prove that we would need a separate team to just produce this type of deliverable and could not support the Program with any day-by-day UX support.

We also concluded that users need to be IN the application in order to produce accurate results of how CAMPS Inc. 1 specifically improves their workflows. We were starting to speculate which is not helpful.

I came up with my own diagram below that illustrates the amount of time and effort our team put in for these Customer Journey Maps which approximately was a total of 260 hours of work devoted to this project and cost analysis of $29,286 to the program. We decided to revisit this process when users are in the application to help yield more accurate results.

** Important Note: This analysis was for processes for the Barrels during the time of 2021 and since then we conclude we would need another customer journey map(s) to provide insights in how their workflows have changed since then and what specific value CAMPS Inc. 1 brings to the users. We are prepared to do this when Tanker Barrels transition Fall of 2024.