CONTROLLING THE CHAOS: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO MANAGING A SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Abstract

AbstractWhy so much chaos so quickly on many development programs? Typically during the proposal phase the Management Volume is generated in isolation from the Technical Volume and vise versa. After the program is awarded this discontinuity becomes a major fissure embedded in the foundation upon which the program is built. Often chaos in varying degrees results. Symptoms of this condition include: difficulty in measuring progress which impairs visibility afforded to management; key requirements are not communicated to all impacted areas; and critical issues do not get surfaced to management in a timely fashion. Thus the chaos level of the system rises which, in turn, causes the technical, cost, and schedule risk to increase since risk increases proportionately with the chaos level of the system. This paper suggests two ways of minimizing program chaos: first, to implement semi‐autonomous Integrated Product Teams (IPT) and organize them according to the logic of the System Development Process (SDP) (see Adamsen, 1995); second, to integrate the responsibilities of management and technical development under each IPT, fitting each to function semi‐autonomously. The IPT then becomes the mechanism for integrating not only the technical activities, but also the management activities. This environment fosters an atmosphere of camaraderie which facilitates communication across all disciplines of activity. In addition, the development of meaningful metrics tracked with honest inputs occurs since naturally adversarial relationships have been alleviated. Open and honest communication to management is encouraged since all are on the same team and win or lose together, and management of the configuration is facilitated because all the stakeholders are involved in the development. With this approach, the typical discontinuity between the management team and the technical development team, and the ensuing chaos, can be effectively mitigated.