Stakeholder Collaboration in Air Force Acquisition: Adaptive Design Using System Representations

摘要

This research, conducted under the auspices of the Lean Aerospace Initiative, sought to determine how Air Force development programs could achieve high levels of adaptability during the design phase of acquisition while maintaining effective management of program risk. Due to the tremendous uncertainty faced by many development programs in such areas as requirements, technology, and funding, traditional planning and measurement efforts, with their emphasis on stability, must be complemented by efforts to promote adaptability. The thesis of this research is that the quality and nature of the collaboration between stakeholders during the design phase of weapon system development programs determines how effectively they share knowledge, which in turn drives the level of program adaptability. To gain insight into the phenomena of stakeholder collaboration and adaptability, this research undertook retrospective studies of eight development programs, focusing on the design phase. During design, changes are typically more affordable than they are during the ensuing test period because they involve less rework. Command and Control (C2) systems were selected for the eight studies because of their acute need to manage change over time, which arises from the rapid rate of technology change in the areas of communications and computers. The research focused on collaboration between three major stakeholders who contribute unique knowledge and fill different roles during the design phase. The first stakeholder is the user community or warfighter - the eventual operators of the system. Second is a government acquisition agency, or System Program Office (SPO), whose role is to establish and oversee one or more contracts with private industry to perform the development work within established programmatic constraints. The third major stakeholder is a prime contractor who develops the system in accordance with the government contract. (54 tables, 16 figures).