Team Swamped
Arizona State University
Innovating Organizational Structures to support the excavation of MIA soldiers from past conflicts
The Team
Shane Jinson
• 2nd-year PhD student in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University
• Fellow Assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA
• BA in Biology from Northern Vermont University
Shivaani Methuku
• Former Software Engineering Intern at GoDaddy and Ticketmaster
• VP in ASU Women in Computer Science
• BS in Computer Science candidate at Arizona State University
Travis Andren
• CEO & Co-Founder of Lemna LLC
• Chairman & CEO of D3 Designs Inc.
• Current MS in Innovation & Venture Development at Arizona State University
• MS Environmental Policy Management, Energy Management and Sustainability from University of Denver
• BS in Industrial Design from Arizona State University
Problem Sponsor
US ARMY DPAA - Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
Original Problem Statement
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency archeological teams need an effective wetland mitigation method in order to conduct safe recovery operations in areas of shallow water or saturated soils.
Beneficiary Discovery Interviews
51
The Innovation
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) supports the location and excavation of the remains of MIA individuals from past military conflicts. The DPAA tasked Team Swamped of ASU with solving a complicated wetland excavation of site 2711 in Grado, Italy and consider larger organizational challenges that would make these types of excavations more efficient in the future.
On January 30, 1944, a flight crew of ten on a mission to Yugoslavia was hit and crashed off the coast of Italy. With one survivor and two bodies recovered, the remaining seven soldiers remained unaccounted for until 2014 when a local farmer at site 2711was digging and found a military boot. This indicated that the remaining bodies are likely below the property's duck pond.
Team Swamped was brought in to support excavation at this particularly challenging site. The forensic archeologists they had spoken with with 10, 15 and even 30 years of experience stated that this was the most complicated site they had worked with. This pond, now on private land and home to endangered species presented a variety of challenges to Team Swamped, including navigating relationships with Italian partners and determining heavy equipment needs for such a sensitive, semi-aquatic site. An uninformed excavation attempt could permanently compromise the site.
Through their 51 beneficiary discovery interviews, the team realized that the primary challenge facing the DPAA was not the technology itself, but rather the "lack of awareness and access to available technologies to solve the wetland problem". Excavation capabilities were siloed within the agency and across partners. However, through beneficiary discovery, the team realized that they may be able to better work if the organization served to organize various partners in order to figure out what equipment they have and how they can best use it.
With this in mind, the team created a software MVP that allowed the DPAA to organize all partners by their available technology inventories. This software would allow the archaeological team search and rank partners to help plan and execute missions with greater accuracy and efficiency. After the team identified that the organization of technology was the primary issue for this site, they wanted to think outside the box and address the larger communication problem facing the organization to better inform the planning of this and future excavation missions.
After speaking with other leaders within the organization, they realized their MVP could be integrating with the capabilities of their emerging Salesforce platform. The team mapped out detailed spreadsheets outlining in the site architecture and facilitated a meeting with Salesforce & DPAA to better understand how their MVP could be translated onto the Salesforce platform. The utilization of the platform in this way would result in more effective and estimated savings of $10,000 per mission; with just 100 missions for the organization this would result in an over $100,000,000 in savings. Not only would the use of this platform be more cost effective for the organization, it would allow them to more effectively excavate the bodies of those killed in action and offer closure for family members. While the team does not have plans to continue beyond the semester, they have successfully handed off their work to Salesforce engineers who are able to effectively implement their plan.
Presentation
Team Swamped’s
Hacking for Defense Experience
Getting Comfortable Speaking with Strangers
When reflecting on his experience in the course, Shane Jinson describes how much more comfortable he got speaking to strangers. He shared an experience where he was conducting a beneficiary discovery interview with a DPAA employee and ended up having an impromptu conversation with the Acting Director. He highlights how his experience in Hacking for Defense taught him to have the confidence to go into these interviews while remaining flexible in your assumptions. Shane states that going into interviews he “thought I knew the answer then it was something totally different.”
Shivaani describes the challenges the team faced at the onset of the problem while figuring out what the expectations were and what exactly the problem was all about. The beneficiary discovery interviews helped the team understand what the underlying problem was. Things “got clear as we started doing the interviews.” Similarly, Travis shared how critical it was to share the MVP with those they spoke with. Talking through the MVPs “accelerate the overall process and made the interviews engaging and fun.”
Learning to Navigate Government
Shane emphasized the insight into government agency structure and communication dynamics that he gained through the course. “Anyone interested in working with or within government agencies should take this class”. He greatly increased his confidence through constant engagement with numerous individuals from several different levels of agency personnel within the DPAA and other agencies. Additionally, he was pleasantly surprised by his ability to go beyond “ideal” organizational theory in this class, and learned a good deal about how decisions are actually made within a “real” organizational, bureaucratic structure during this brief but rewarding experience.
Travis admits that before his work on the project, he had not heard of the work being done by the DPAA. His work in Hacking for Defense showed him this humanitarian side of the DoD and “shone a whole new light on the military” for him. His work in this course made him realize just how many personnel are out there to recover.