GAITHERSBURG, MD, 09/04/2001 -- Lockheed Martin's FuturePoint(tm) Process Asset Library (PALtm), a web-based database for process and process-related documentation, recently supported Lockheed Martin's strong showing in an industry benchmarking study conducted by the Software Productivity Consortium. The Consortium's Process Asset Library Benchmarking Report compared the process asset library practices of several organizations from the commercial information technology, aerospace and defense industries. Lockheed Martin Mission Systems, a division of Lockheed Martin, scored highest on the screening instruments used to select benchmarking partners, including a user satisfaction survey and a questionnaire covering fourteen technical categories. The FuturePoint PAL played a key role in Mission Systems' performance, scoring highly in a number of key categories, including user interface, PAL content, performance measurement, configuration management. The proprietary study identified dozens of best practices, many of which are performed by Mission Systems through the use of the FuturePoint PAL. Some of these best practices include:

Provide both graphical and text-based PAL navigation capabilities
Establish a PAL structure that permits multiple views of content items (i.e. life cycle, type of content item, user role, etc.)
Provide the capability to perform keyword search of the name of PAL content items, their internal content, or their abstracts
Distinguish best practices in the PAL
Make new PAL content evident to users with a What's New? section in the PAL
Use flags or meta tags to indicate security sensitivity of process assets

The FuturePoint PAL, a commercially-available product from Lockheed Martin, is developed and implemented by Mission Systems, a Software Capability Maturity Model (SW-CMM) Level 5 company. Lockheed Martin Mission Systems has also attained a Level 3 in SE CM, a Level 3 in the People-CMM, and ISO 9001 registration.

For a process-focused organization, a process asset library needs to be more than just a place to store processes, said Terry Drabant, President of Lockheed Martin Mission Systems. It must serve as the focal point of configuration management, communications, external audits, and continuous improvement. It must enable best practice sharing, lessons learned, and quick startup on new programs. Essentially, it must help the organization work better. This study further establishes the Lockheed Martin PAL as a world-class product that can enable process-focused organizations to significantly improve their process-related initiatives.

Successfully implemented throughout Lockheed Martin Mission Systems for more than five years, the PAL is now a product offering that recently marked its first commercial sale. The PAL features a defined process architecture that allows an organization to manage, add or modify assets in a manner that meets specific business needs or goals. The PAL can also be customized according to a company's enterprise objectives. Other proven capabilities of the PAL include:

Robust change management that allows processes to evolve with business needs;
A section for sample assets that gives users easy access to best practices, lessons learned, and sample templates and assets;
User-friendly, uniform navigation coupled with a powerful search capability that allows users to quickly locate policy and process assets;
A web-based software architecture that enables quick and easy integration of process documents into the PAL in any format, including PDF, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and more. There is no need to convert processes into burdensome templates.

The PAL is a part of FuturePoint, a planning tool that enables businesses to align their information technology (IT) capabilities with business priorities. FuturePoint, a Lockheed Martin service offering, can help Chief Information Officers bring order to the way they modernize their IT environment to more effectively enable the enterprise to achieve its business objectives. FuturePoint provides processes, approaches and tools for enterprise modernization, focusing on strategic planning, enterprise analysis, implementation, and continuous improvement.

The Software Productivity Consortium is a nonprofit partnership of industry, government, and academia. The organization develops processes, methods, tools, and supporting services to help members and affiliates build high-quality, component-based systems, and continuously advance their systems and software engineering maturity pursuant to the guidelines of all of the major process and quality frameworks.

As the Corporation's lead enterprise for Information Superiority, Lockheed Martin Mission Systems serves customers including U.S. and international defense and civil government agencies. Mission Systems employs approximately 2,600 at facilities in Gaithersburg, Colorado Springs, Colo., and Santa Maria, Calif., and is a business unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation.