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Joanne H's avatar

Interesting piece! I would be interested to see how these companies treat/handle the nearly 50% of projects that aren’t on time or budget. I wonder how flexible their funding is and ability to adjust to schedule slips. I wonder if they have a GAO-like organization breathing down their next demanding reporting of why they failed. I wonder if they are even considered failures at all. I think there is a necessary shift in how government acquisition is measured and how we build In flexibility to manage these inevitable risks. Hopefully the PPBE commission can make some progress on the budgeting side, but ultimately it’s a cultural change to accept these likely outcomes, plan for them from the start, and stop calling them failures.

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Pete Modigliani's avatar

Great points Joanne. Delivering mission impactful capabilities at scale is the ultimate measure. Obviously we want them in as timely and affordable means possible. We want to accelerate learning (fail fast if needed) and pivot to what works. We need to shift the thinking beyond managing against an APB as the primary measure of success/failure.

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Joanne H's avatar

Precisely!

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