Firefighting
[96 KB PDF]
All hands on deck helps put out the immediate blazes threatening projects, but falling into a routine of constant firefighting is not the way to guide a project across the finish line.

The Bow Wave Effect
[76 KB PDF]
When deferred requirements pile up and underestimated complexity surround a project, managers end up riding a bow wave of schedule and delivery complications.

Feeding the Sacred Cow
[93 KB PDF]
Some programs take on a life of their own--privileged, and woven into an organization's existence. But when "sacred cow" projects begin to go wrong, that privilege and protection makes fixing them even more difficult.

PMO vs Contractor Hostility
[126 KB PDF]
Everyone intends the best in project-driven marriages of PMOs and contractors, but good intentions can't overcome the hostility generated by loss of trust and squabbles in poorly developed relationships.

The SEI’s Acquisition Support Program is developing Acquisition Archetypes to help the software community identify, manage and prevent recurring patterns of counter-productive practices in software acquisition. This work is based on experiences with actual programs, and uses concepts from the systems thinking field to characterize and analyze dynamics that have been observed. A set of concept briefs is being developed as an initial part of this effort to describe some of the most common patterns, and assist acquisition programs in handling and avoiding them.

Acquisition Archetypes

Acquisition Archetypes are an exploration of patterns of failure in software acquisition. These concept briefs are concise, one-page papers that provide a real-life software acquisition story that illustrates how commonly recurring pattern affected an actual program. The papers also discuss possible interventions that can be used to correct and prevent such behavior.