COMMENTARY
The return on investment in our people may be orders of magnitude better than the return on investment of an acquisition program of record, prototyping effort or experiment.
more rationality, the organizational and political dimensions of decision-making matter, and these dimensions interact with behavioral biases in particular ways.
Research centering on the acknowledgment and study of bounded rationality has long recognized that people process information in ways that may lead them to make biased judgments. Cogni- tive biases are a two-edged sword: On the one hand they have a positive function in helping people to make fast decisions using limited cognitive resources. On the other, cognitive biases also lead people to make errors in decision-making that deviate—often in important ways—from rational decision-making.
Nonetheless, a basic premise of research into biases is that, as the volume and complexity of information increases, we are forced into using simplifying tactics that ration the limited cognitive resources we have available. Hence, we adopt heuristics that ease the cognitive strain. And because these heuristics involve ration- ing how information is processed, we develop systematic patterns of bias in decision-making.
CONCLUSION Tat we see the effects of behavioral biases within the manage- ment and decision-making of acquisition programs comes as no surprise. For the past three decades, acquisition manage- ment has been highlighted on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list for excessive waste and mismanagement. Notable programs have failed to deliver capability and have failed to meet performance, cost and schedule management targets. Te root causes of program failure vary from ill-defined require- ments, immature technologies, integration challenges and poor cost estimating, to the acceptance of too much development risk.
Underappreciated and understudied is the effect that systemic biases have on acquisition professionals and, more importantly, on acquisition program milestone decision authority, which contrib- utes to the root causes of acquisition program failures. Te better we understand the effect of these systemic behavioral biases, the better we can mitigate the risks of program failures resulting from poor or suboptimal decision-making.
Te culture and leadership at different levels of DOD, from the institutional level to the organizational level to the program level, affect the impact of the biases. In DOD’s hierarchical chain of command, the PMs are responsible for the program’s cost, schedule and performance. However, the PMs do not establish the perfor- mance requirements, cost or schedule objectives of the acquisition program baseline—the services do. Additionally, PMs report to a milestone decision authority, who approves the program and determines overall program strategic direction. Te systemic biases at the various levels of the chain of command manifest differently in the decision-making models used at different levels. Behavioral acquisition studies how culture, leadership, hierarchies and deci- sion-making models moderate the effect of systemic behavioral biases with the goal of improving the management and execution of programs—ultimately improving program outcomes and satis- fying warfighter requirements for better capabilities.
Future articles in the "Been Tere, Done Tat" series will take a case study-based approach and highlight how behavioral biases affect decision-making within acquisition efforts and contribute to acqui- sition program failures.
For more information, contact the author at
rfmortlo@nps.edu.
DR. ROBERT F. MORTLOCK, COL., USA (Ret.) managed defense systems development and acquisition efforts for the last 15 of his 27 years in the U.S. Army. He’s now a professor of the practice, teaching defense acquisition and program management in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, an MBA from Webster University, an M.S. in national resource strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Lehigh University. He holds DAWIA Level III certifications in program management, test and evaluation, and engineering, as well as the Project Management Professional and Program Management Professional credentials. His most recent piece for Army AL&T was "Who Is the Customer?" in the Winter 2021 edition.
https://asc.ar my.mil 145
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176
