Does EVMS serve any other purpose than to justify cost overruns?
Earned Value Management (EVM) is a complicated system for measuring baseline plans, actual costs, and technical progress on large, complex defense contracts. It evolved from […]
cost growth
SpaceX’s platform-based strategy beats bespoke requirements
Bent Flyvgjberg and Atif Ansar have a new article providing evidence that SpaceX projects outperform historical and contemporary competitors by using a platform approach. The […]
Podcast: The political-economy of defense with Russell Rumbaugh
I was pleased to have Russell Rumbaugh join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss some of the most fundamental issues facing defense management. […]
Podcast: Risk, Cost, and Project Management with Christian Smart
Christian Smart joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss his new book, Solving for Project Risk Management. He is the chief scientist at […]
An innovation culture maximizes variation, a manufacturing culture decreases it
Most companies over-optimize for efficiency. They want to get so good at their current market that they lose flexibility to adjust to the future. And […]
Why are analysts complicit in cost and schedule growth?
I showed that for 10 projects for which a cost risk analysis had been conducted, the actual cost was greater than the 90th percentile for […]
Healthcare analogies for defense acquisition
I think we have to remember we have good people in healthcare. We are all attracted to the healthcare profession out of a sense of […]
Cost growth and profitability are hard to pin down
The analysis on the correlation between the lead branch of military service responsible for MDAPs and cost growth patterns reveals that programs led by the […]
Boeing’s KC-46 struggles, but here’s the payoff
The U.S. Air Force on Thursday finally accepted and took ownership from Boeing of its first KC-46A air-to-air refueling tanker, though it pointed to flaws […]
How does cost growth affect decision making?
I’m not sure how these results support the idea that “a solid and funded test plan often mitigates future cost growth.” It sounds like if you were 10% over budget to first flight — and that reliably means you’ll be that much or over for the program — then engineering and requirements problems were the culprit and not testing.
Defense Acquisition as a Cost Disease Sector: What’s the Evidence?
At any given time, you will have sectors where demand is growing faster than productivity (think of health care and education) and other sectors where […]