Testing of Defense Systems in an Evolutionary Acquisition Environment (2006) / Chapter Skim
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4 Changes to Infrastructure, Process, and Culture in Support of Evolutionary Acquisition
4 Changes to Infrastructure, Process, and Culture in Support of Evolutionary Acquisition
Pages 34-41
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From page 34... ...
Several ways of developing a more collaborative relationship with the statistical community were outlined in Chapter 10 of Statistics, Testing, and Defense Acquisition: New Approaches and Methodological Improvements (National Research Council, 1998)
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From page 35... ...
By a test (and field) data archive, we mean the following (as discussed in National Research Council, 2004:59-60)
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From page 36... ...
If the above data are available, they can be used to help design efficient testing in the system's evolutionary development process; they can greatly facilitate the effective combining of data from different sources over time; they can be used to interpolate the results of testing in a limited number of operational situations in order to assess capabilities of the system in situations not tested; they can provide a "hot plant" for reliability assessments; and they can assist in developing performance correlates (e.g., reliability) for design of the system's evolutionary upgrades.
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From page 37... ...
To help implement this recommendation, ideally, a data plan could be established early in the program that would be connected to a modeling plan, so that at every stage the needed data could be obtained. Various performance parameters and related statistics could therefore have a common format that would facilitate using those data.
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From page 38... ...
There was widespread concern among the industrial participants at the workshop that this flexibility in the identification of requirements can lead to serious problems in evaluating the performance of the systems and potential for "gaming" the development process. Besides clear and consistent definitions, a consistent and definitive articulation of the goals and intention of the evolutionary acquisition process is needed, as well as supporting documentation detailing the specific changes that will need to be implemented throughout the acquisition community (e.g., how the milestone system is intended to operate in conjunction with evolutionary acquisition)
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From page 39... ...
The more flexible approach of evolutionary acquisition may encourage this practice, since requirements that are difficult to meet might be pushed back to later stages of development. Clearly, there is a trade-off between gaining efficiencies inherent in a flexible acquisition process and the pressures for greater oversight and systematic documentation of the overall development process.
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From page 40... ...
Improving the incentive structure (i.e., aligning the incentives of the major players) is perhaps the most onerous obstacle facing the DoD acquisition process if it is to better meet the difficult challenges in acquiring and fielding complex, expensive systems in a timely, efficient manner.
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From page 41... ...
before any changes to the policies are implemented in order to assess and improve their like lihood of being successfully implemented in the DoD and defense industry culture.
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