Louis Poulin

Various models and standards have been developed and are used throughout the world to assess the capability of organizations in various domains, including development, services, security and safety. While such models and standards have mostly been used to assess compliance and obtain a certification, they can also be used to improve and to deploy processes that exploit the opportunities an organization has of meeting its business objectives and to prevent the potential problems to which it is exposed from occurring and degenerating into crises.

Data from a set of 40 comprehensive assessments conducted over 10 years, and spanning Europe, North America and South America, was compiled and subsequently used to better understand the factors at stake in organizations developing products and services relying on Information Technology. Each appraisal was performed in a separate organization. In particular, some anomalies were detected that warranted more in-depth analysis. Even though correlation was observed between mature processes and the quality of resulting products and services, it was not true for all cases. Good quality products and services sometimes originated from organizations having relatively low maturity processes whereas in other cases, organizations characterized by more mature processes generated disappointing results. Other models were subsequently used in the emergency management, resources management and information security fields to verify the validity of obtained results.

The critical threshold associated with the likelihood of experiencing problems was found to be approximately 40%. A project or an organization cannot sustain such a likelihood of experiencing problems for any significant duration relative to the planned or current activities. A likelihood of problems equal to 50% would correspond to a project or an organization operating at random, and if such were the case, it would be wishful thinking to expect any successful outcome over a significant period of time.

Biography:

Mr. Poulin has been involved in Process Engineering and Operational Risk Management since 1993 in the private and public sectors. In this capacity, he directed the development of a tool suite relying on neural networks to predict the likelihood of experiencing problems of an organization in response to events and situations as a function of the organization's capacity to deal with such events and situations. As the saying goes, “Forewarned is Forearmed”. He also assessed and recommended product development and service delivery methodologies in various countries and cultures, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, England, France, Germany, India, Switzerland, and the United States of America. 

Previous to 1993, Mr. Poulin was Project Director for developing products in fields encompassing software engineering, air navigation, explosives/weapons detection and embedded control systems in connection with the transportation sector. Projects carried out as part of this assignment included the development of 3-D air traffic control applications, GPS-based navigational aids, weapons/explosives detection systems, Microwave Landing System (MLS) certification instrumentation, and GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuits for MLS phase array antennas. 

He was also an Engineering Manager responsible for the technical management and software design of military helicopter airborne systems and shipboard anti-submarine warfare systems based on an automatically reconfigurable computer network. In this role, he was responsible for the technical management of the Air Vehicle Data Handling Subsystem, TEMPEST, EMC, Communications, Integrated Avionics Survivability/Vulnerability and Armament/Stores Clearance deliverables for the EH-101 (NSA) Program. He also supervised or carried out the subsystem and software design and implementation of the Canadian Patrol Frigate (CPF) Anti-Submarine Warfare Systems, and received the Achievement Award for Excellence from Unisys in recognition of the completion of this activity ahead of schedule

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