The US Department of Defense is overhauling it’s acquisition policy from a stale, process-driven approach to a new, outcome-driven approach. The new concept is called the Adaptive Acquisition Framework (AAF). Its goal is to remove bureaucracy and give government program managers more flexibility to adapt to the needs of their particular acquisition.
he problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience… i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business…
General James Mattis
TL;DR: An Integrated Product Team (IPT) is a cross-functional group. If everyone on the team has the same background, that’s a functional or discipline team. There’s a difference.
Pro basketball player Kawhi Leonard found his niche as “The Board Man”. What’s your niche?
We’ve come a long way. It’s never been a better time to enter the workforce as a woman/person of color/LGBTQ/etc. Diversity in the workforce and leadership of engineering companies is on the rise, barriers are falling, and the value of diversity is being recognized. And yet, we still have so far to go.
The vast majority of catastrophes are created by a series of factors that line up in just the wrong way, allowing seemingly-small details to add up to a major incident. The Swiss cheese model is a great way to visualize this and is fully compatible with systems thinking. Understanding it will help you design systems which are more resilient to failures, errors, and even security threats.
“A Message to Garcia” is a brief essay on the value of initiative and hard work written by Elbert Hubbard in 1898. It is often assigned in leadership courses, particularly in the military. There are a number of interpretations and potential lessons to be extracted from this story. It’s important that developing leaders find the valuable ideas.
The INCOSE Handbook “Specialty Engineering” section is a hodge-podge of roles and skillsets with varying scope. It does a disservice to many of the aspects, particularly human systems integration (HSI).
The 737 is an excellent airplane with a long history of safe, efficient service. Boeing’s cockpit philosophy of direct pilot control and positive mechanical feedback represents excellent human factors. In the latest generation, the 737 Max, Boeing added a new component to the flight control system which deviated from this philosophy, resulting in two fatal crashes. This is a case study in the failure of human factors engineering and systems engineering.
I was recently offered an incredible opportunity to spend a day aboard an operational U.S. Navy ship, meeting the crew and observing their work as they conducted a live fire exercise. The experience blew me away. I came away with new appreciation for our surface forces as well as observations relevant for defense acquisition policy and systems engineering.