Can the Air Force scale small companies into a program of record?
Remember the dreaded “valley of death” in technology transition? The Air Force plans to bridge the valley by progressively scaling up its pitch days. A […]
Month: December 2019
Acquisition headlines
Did America Forget How to Make the H-Bomb? “… officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration realized they couldn’t produce an essential material known as […]
How should budget appropriations be reorganized?
Congress should reorganize appropriations titles (the “color of money”) to reflect the kind of life cycle a thing has, not what part of the life […]
How shared equipment dramatically lowers barriers to deep tech R&D
In the same way that AWS dramatically lowered the bar to start a software company, you’re seeing the same thing of multiple labs-as-a-service companies that […]
Must contractors build an internal program office to comply with CMMC?
Richard Beutel: The feedback were getting from the companies is that the DOD is pushing a lot of the administrative and policy development back on […]
The backlash to Packard’s rapid acquisition and reform: a warning
David Packard left office as DepSecDef in December 1971, and a few years later with the passage of OMB Circular A-109 and updates to the […]
Agile at scale, decoupling teams, and enterprise software in the DOD
One of the issues we see is programs trying going straight to the scaled agile development framework, like SAFe. We issued a memo highly discouraging […]
Explaining the valley of death in defense technology
I’m going to walk though some an excellent set of slides on the “valley of death” problem from Gary Hagan over at DAU. Let’s start […]
Acquisition headlines
How Russia Improved its Military With An Economy the Size of Spain. Subtitle: “The Russians spend the highest share of their military budget on procurement […]
Centralization was wrong for atomic power, the case of Britain and the US
The development of atomic power for the generation of electricity provides a useful illustration. In the mid-fifties major technical decisions had to be made with […]
New Pentagon IP chief and unresolved questions
The Pentagon’s new director of intellectual property began work last week focused on standing up a “cadre” of experts who can advise and train defense […]
Big changes might be ahead to simplify commercial buying
On Wednesday, November 27, the Department of Defense (DoD) published a proposed rule that simplifies the acquisition of commercial products to meet military requirements. Two […]
Why managers pad budgets and build empires: the law of anticipated reactions
To some extent, the strength and security of an organization is associated with its size, the rank of its personnel, and the amount of funds […]
Podcast: Lt. Gen. David Deptula (ret.) on mosaic warfare, strategy, and the digital century series
I was please to speak with Lt. Gen. David Deptula (ret.) on the Acquisition Talk podcast. He is currently Dean at the Mitchell Institute for […]
How delegation of authority is proceeding in Air Force contracting
The big question in my mind is not whether we are going to increase the authorities at the lower levels — we have to do […]