|
Happy Friday!
Of course our big preoccupation this week is preparing for next week's symposium, and we hope you have plans to join us! We've included the list of panels in this email to help you think through your days.
In ARP and NPS news, check out the profile of Capt. Madison Tikalsky, USAF, who completed research last year on using AI to generate Software Bill of Materials.
And our top story is from Mike Brown, former DIU chief, who proposes actually making speed a measurable requirement in the acquisition business.
We've got more stories for you below but offer no more summaries because, well, your humble editor is sick this week.
Enjoy scanning the headlines, and we'll see in Monterey or virtually next week!
21st Annual Acquisition Research Symposium
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Keynote Speaker: Honorable Nickolas H. Guertin, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Research, Development and Acquisition
9:10 AM - 10:15 AM
Plenary panel #01: Resourcing Innovation: Ensuring that the defense industrial base is postured to support producing innovation at scale
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Panel #02: How Space Acquisition Stays Agile
Panel #03: Acquisition Workforce from the Service Directors, Acquisition Career/Talent Management
Panel #04: Lessons in Shipbuilding: Past, Present, and Future
12:45 PM - 2:00 PM
Panel #05: Integrating Cybersecurity and Managing Risk
Panel #06: Strengthening Supply Chains and Logistics
Panel #07: Optimizing Relationships through Contracting
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Panel #08: Strategies for Financing Defense Innovation
Panel #09: How Do Other Organizations Do it? Planning-Programming-Budgeting and Execution in International and non-DoD Federal Government Agencies
Panel #10: How Systems Engineering Enables Acquisition Innovation
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
Panel #11: Managing Programs for Speed
Panel #12: Adaptive Acquisition Framework: Latest Lessons
Panel #13: Assessing the Defense Industrial Base
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Student Research Poster Showcase
THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2024
8:00 AM
Plenary panel #14: Service acquisition flag officer roundtable
9:15 AM - 10:15 AM
Keynote Speakers: Honorable William LaPlante (Ph.D.), Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment and Honorable Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Panel #15: International Acquisition: Partners and Adversaries
Panel #16: Innovative Contracting Approaches in DoD
Panel #17: Planning for Autonomous Vessels
12:45 PM - 2:00 PM
Panel #18 (plenary): Planning, Programming, Budget and Execution (PPBE) Reform Commissioners' Report
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Panel #19: Advancements in Digital Engineering for Test and Evaluation
Panel #20: Enhancing Acquisition with Artificial Intelligence
Panel #21: Acquiring, Developing, and Modernizing Software-Based Systems
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
Panel #22: Opportunities with Modeling & Simulation
Panel #23: Artificial Intelligence Across the Acquisition Lifecycle
Panel #24: Innovative Ideas and Insights for Improving Program Resourcing Across Seams
This Week's Top Story
Time—The Forgotten Dimension In Defense
Mike Brown, Forbes
Among technology companies, time is the critical, omnipresent competitive dimension with leading companies focusing on a time-to-market metric. In the computer industry where I grew up, being first-to or early-to-market often determined the ability to set standards or win the largest customers creating a network effect unlocking disproportionate investment returns. Today’s tech giants have their roots in being a first mover as Microsoft did in establishing an operating system for IBM’s personal computer or Amazon did with its vision for becoming the online everything store. As the National Defense Strategy of 2018 stated, “Success goes to the country that..better integrates…and adapts its way of fighting…Our response will be to prioritize speed of delivery, continuous adaptation, and frequent modular upgrades.” In other words, speed matters.
Unfortunately, and to its detriment, the bureaucratic structure and culture within the Defense Department is most often at odds with going fast. Naturally, safety and security are primary concerns when lives are on the line; but, as the Ukrainian conflict shows, being slow in adopting the latest technology—whether with drones, leveraging commercial satellite imagery, or in secure communications—can have deadly consequences. The most glaring examples of slowness I saw from my time leading the Defense Innovation Unit were budgeting and acquiring new capabilities for warfighters. These interrelated and lethargic processes include not just procuring and contracting but also the time for setting the requirements (deciding what to buy), testing and aligning the budget resources. ...
I recommend the Defense Department explicitly recognize speed as a competitive dimension. To do so is relatively simple: measure the actual time to make a decision, complete a process, or deliver an outcome. If every process were measured in time, there would be surprise at the length of time required with a resulting leadership focus on what could be done to improve. Note this is not the same as being on schedule—which is completing a task within a forecast even if measured in years and perhaps extending to a timeframe beyond relevant. The exception is Major Defense Acquisition Programs where time has been measured consistently and showing longer cycle times, but longer cycles have not forced tradeoffs to achieve a shorter cycle time. Schedule is prioritized but not speed to deliver. Commercial industry readily recognizes that with shorter cycles there are also more continuous improvements made at lower cost—which is what the 2018 National Defense Strategy called for.
Chris Meyer, a friend and practitioner in tech business wrote about this almost 20 years ago coining the phrase “fast cycle time” and suggesting how to align business purpose, strategy and structure for speed. I saw this methodology implemented in the disk drive company I worked for with a resulting faster time to develop and field new products. With a focus on speed at the Defense Department, there would be a balance to the implicit objectives of following process at all costs (even if the outcome is flawed or hopelessly late) and ensuring no tax dollars are wasted (even if the tracking process wastes taxpayer dollars). There is probably no more striking example of the focus on speed than the production of the P-51 Mustang from WWII which was flying 153 days after an initial order and operating within two years. Contrast that example with the F-35, admittedly a more complex airplane, but one which came from various designs in the 1980s and 1990s, first flew in 2005 and began operating in 2015 for a total elapsed time of 25 years. The comparable figure for commercial aircraft today from first order to flying with passengers is 7 years. Countless other examples abound from each Service branch of increasing schedules—from submarines to missile development—yet no one is responsible today for improving the speed of delivering capability.
|
