Chartering Project Managers within Defense Agencies Rather than Military Departments: Why and Why Not

Abstract

Abstract : Chartered Project Managers for major defense systems are almost exclusively located within the DoD organizational structure at Military Department level. While project management is practiced at Defense Agencies it is characteristically done without a formal charter. Major systems acquisition responsibility is assigned by Defense Agencies to a Military Department. The one chartered project manager identified at a Defense Agency, the Project Manager for the Defense Satellite Communications Program, Phase II at the Defense Communications Agency has cogent reasons for his position in the organizational structure, and integrates the efforts of project managers in two services who manage subsystems of the Defense Satellite Communications System. This study has shown that project managers in Defense Agencies are difficult to identify. This study has shown that the number of identifiable major defense system project managers at Defense Agencies is not sufficiently large to warrant characterization of project management at Defense Agency level versus Military department level in terms of their characteristic mode of operation, problems encountered, and their types of successes and failures.