Dovel All Hands
Dovel’s latest all hands meeting took place on June 13 with presenters in the Rockville office of the GrantSolutions team and employees across the company watching online from conference rooms and their desks. If you missed it or need a quick refresher, we wanted to supply some highlights. The slides for the full session are available on the employee portal.
• CEO, Paul Leslie, opened the event with an update on the government IT market. He discussed that while there is still a lot of uncertainty stemming from the administration’s inability to fill key leadership roles, everyone must continue to concentrate on keeping projects running in the best interest of the American public. He highlighted that even in this climate, budget obligations are up 10% in the first half of 2017. Moving forward, a big impact on our customers’ budgets will be the Modernizing Government Technology Act (MGT), which recently passed the House. This act is aimed at reducing the cost of running legacy systems and incentivizing agencies to implement savings through modernization. A government shutdown is being discussed in the media, but is highly unlikely with industry experts predicting the government will operate under a continuing resolution come FY 18.
• COO, Damon Griggs, reflected back on his first six months at Dovel in this new role for the company. He discussed Dovel’s unique ability to act lean and be responsive like a small business while holding the capacity of a much larger business through our past performance and employee expertise. At the halfway point of the year, the company is operating ahead of our budget plans in terms of revenue. This financial success is partially bolstered by the fact that 95% of our contracts are prime contracts. We control our destiny when we are prime. A big priority for the remainder of the year are Program Management reviews, which will give us better visibility into the status and health of all of our programs.
• Laura Roth, Vice President, shared an update from the BD/CMO team. This year we have submitted more than 12 RFI’s (Requests for Information). Getting involved in the procurement process at the RFI stage helps us better shape the final RFP. There are another eight projects that we are tracking in capture that are pre-RFI. From a forward-looking BD perspective, we are looking to grow a footprint in Military Health, DHS, CMS, and CDC. We’re also looking for work in the areas of cloud, security, and terminology. Laura shared a quick primer on semantics explaining that terminology is more than just standardizing on a term, it is creating a framework of related phrases to provide a holistic look at data related to a concept.
• Dov Levy, Chief Technologist, shared details on a recent tabletop exercise the GrantSolutions team undertook to better prepare for cybersecurity events. The exercise walked participants, including representatives from the government, through three fictional scenarios where systems were breached, escalating the seriousness of the situation as the team was planning their responses. This exercise is helping the team develop playbooks that can be used in case of a cybersecurity event.
• Next a panel of technologists discussed software development trends and tools. Erich Oliphant (moderator), Stan Skorodumov, Authesh Boomibalagan, Naga Nandivelugu, and Oleg Volkov talked about their unique experiences on their projects but an underlying theme that arose was how to develop software in an environment you cannot control. For most of our projects, we must work within an environment provided by our client and within the confines of our contract. The panel discussed how to innovate and introduce new methodologies, like Agile, into projects where the environment (both technical and cultural) may not have been initially designed for that approach.
• HR VP, Sharon Palmeter, closed out the meeting discussing the launch of this year’s summer intern program and previewing the summer picnic at Hershey Park.
If you want even more details, you can download the video of the full event on the employee portal. Password: DOV2017