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About the Presentation

Analysis work by the SEI on data collected from more than 100 Independent Technical Assessments (ITAs) of software-reliant acquisition programs has produced insights into the most common ways that programs encounter difficulties. Programs regularly experience recurring cost, schedule, and quality failures, and progress and outcomes often appear to be unpredictable and unmanageable. Furthermore, many acquisition leaders and staffers neither recognize these recurring issues nor realize that known solutions exist for many of these problems. In this area of work, the SEI is trying to mitigate the effects of misaligned acquisition program organizational incentives and adverse software-reliant acquisition structural dynamics by improving program staff decision making. To do this, we are modeling and analyzing both the adverse acquisition dynamics that we have encountered in actual programs, as well as candidate solutions to resolve those dynamics. Building on past work with acquisition archetypes that present qualitative models of adverse acquisition dynamics, we are now building executable system dynamics models, which allow those behaviors to be analyzed and validated. Potential solutions are then constructed and connected to the problem model, allowing us to evaluate the ability of each approach to mitigate the dynamic. Ultimately, the objective is not only to assess the relative merits of different solution approaches and identify those that perform best, but to develop interactive acquisition simulations that offer acquisition practitioners the chance to "learn by doing." This involves recognizing, experiencing, and resolving complex acquisition dynamics in the classroom, rather than during the development of mission-critical systems.  By improving program decision making, we can help programs overcome counterproductive behaviors that stem from misaligned incentives and underlying dynamics, and thus deploy higher-quality systems to the field in a more timely and cost-effective manner.

About the Speaker

William Novak is a senior member of the technical staff at the SEI. He is a researcher, consultant, and instructor in the acquisition and development of software-reliant systems. Novak has more than 25 years of experience with real-time embedded software product development, government acquisition, and business management. Prior to coming to the SEI, he worked at GTE, GE Corporate Research and Development, GE Aerospace, and Texas Instruments. His technical background includes research and development work in software engineering, development environments, software reuse, and digital signal processing. Novak has received a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.