Best Practices for Managing Large-scale Federal Acquisition Programs: An Overview of the Critical Factors that Need to be Addressed to Reduce the Risk of Cost Overruns and Schedule Delays
About the Series
Over the past few years, much attention has focused on the fact that cost overrun as and schedule delays continue to plague many Department of Defense (DOD) and Intelligence Community (IC) acquisition programs. The question remains: What can be done to reverse this trend?
This three-part webinar series will provide specific techniques and highlight best practices to successfully lead mission critical, high risk, technically challenging large-scale acquisition programs. Throughout the webinar series, best practices and techniques will be presented drawn from the speaker's own experience as well as from contemporary literature on project management, systems engineering, technology management, and leadership. In addition, participants will have the opportunity to pose questions and participate in an interactive discussion with the presenter.
Webinar #3:
Leading Large-Scale Federal Defense Acquisition Programs
The third webinar in this series will focus on practical project management, systems engineering, and technology management techniques to lead a large-scale federal acquisition program. Large- scale federal acquisition programs are both difficult and challenging even for the most seasoned program managers. Leading these types of projects requires a versatile skill set, the ability to manage the unforeseen, and a strategic vision. This webinar will provide specific techniques and best practices to successfully lead large-scale, mission critical, high risk, highly visible, and technically challenging projects where there are often multiple stakeholders. Throughout the presentation, best practices and techniques will be presented that are drawn from the speaker’s own experience as well as from contemporary literature on project management, leadership, systems engineering, and technology management.
Download the presentation. Play the recorded webinar.
Webinar #2:
The second webinar in this series will focus on discussing the inferred causes and symptoms of why cost overruns and schedule delays occur on large-scale, federal acquisition programs. We will analyze several government defense and intelligence agency large-scale acquisition programs that experienced significant cost overruns and schedule delays to show that several critical factors need to be addressed in the preacquisition phase of the acquisition cycle. These factors include overzealous advocacy, technology readiness levels, life-cycle cost estimating, schedule details, requirements maturity, acquisition and contract strategy, program office personnel tenure and experience, risk management, and systems engineering. The result of this study—which incorporated data from industry responses, government and industry executive interviews, numerous studies, and reports—indicate that early pre-acquisition activities executed in a rigorous fashion can significantly reduce the risk of cost overruns and schedule delays.In addition, data on why these issues to continue to occur on large-scale, federal acquisition programs will be discussed. Further analysis of study data infers that the causes of cost overruns and schedule slips on large-scale U.S. federal defense and intelligence acquisition programs can be traced to ineffective human resources policies and practices, consolidation of the aerospace industry, and too many stakeholders. Block diagrams have been developed to illustrate the sequential flow from inferred cause to systematic effects and reveal key interrelationships among each cause.
Download the presentation. Play the recorded webinar.
Webinar #1:
ASSESSING THE CHALLENGES IN DEFENSE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
Causal Inferences on the Cost Overruns and Schedule Delays of Large-scale US Federal Defense and Intelligence Acquisition Programs
A study was undertaken to understand why cost overruns and schedule delays have occurred and continue to occur on large-scale U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence community programs. Analysis of data from this study infers the causes of cost overruns and schedule slips on large-scale U.S. federal defense and intelligence acquisition programs to ineffective human resources policies and practices, consolidation of the aerospace industry, and too many stakeholders. In this article, each inferred cause and the resulting systematic effects are discussed in detail. Moreover, block diagrams have been developed for each cause and illustrate the sequential flow from inferred cause to systematic effects and reveal key interrelationships among each cause.
Download the presentation. Play the recorded webinar.
Articles by Steven Meier:
Best Project Management and Systems Engineering Practices
Causal Inferences in the Cost Overruns and Schedule Delays
Members can login to download articles. Go to Library folder; A&D SIG Documents, Articles.