As DoD embarks on new processes, there’s a corrosive culture to want to analyze the new thing in detail from the start. This often includes a report to Congress, multiple GAO and/or DOD IG audits, and many updates to senior leadership.
Ben Rich also talked about this in his excellent book "Skunk Works". All of industry sees the advantages to less oversight but the USG does not, at least not at the implementation/KO level. And reducing the checkers goes against human nature: If you are a checker, the way you show your value is by finding "problems". The more "issues" you can find, the more eveerything slows down BUT the better your performance looks. The only way I can see to fix this is either set a maximum number of USG checkers per [insert your favorite figure of merit here - - - per million dollars of value, or some measure of system complexity, etc.]. Or just reduce the USG budget of "checking" organizations so they cannot afford to employ more checkers than some minimally essential number.
Great points, Pete. The latest issue of Defense News has an article on how the B-21 program managed to progress so fast from concept to first article: the Rapid Capabilities Office limited the number of reviewers, and of reviewers of the reviewers. And they held reviews by senior people in parallel, in person, not sequentially. Good article.
Mack - Yes great point. Former SECAF James had the quote of the year so far.
“There were fewer checkers checking the checkers,” James said. “Don’t ever underestimate the ability of the Pentagon bureaucracy and these many, many reviews to slow the doggone thing down.”
Ben Rich also talked about this in his excellent book "Skunk Works". All of industry sees the advantages to less oversight but the USG does not, at least not at the implementation/KO level. And reducing the checkers goes against human nature: If you are a checker, the way you show your value is by finding "problems". The more "issues" you can find, the more eveerything slows down BUT the better your performance looks. The only way I can see to fix this is either set a maximum number of USG checkers per [insert your favorite figure of merit here - - - per million dollars of value, or some measure of system complexity, etc.]. Or just reduce the USG budget of "checking" organizations so they cannot afford to employ more checkers than some minimally essential number.
Great points, Pete. The latest issue of Defense News has an article on how the B-21 program managed to progress so fast from concept to first article: the Rapid Capabilities Office limited the number of reviewers, and of reviewers of the reviewers. And they held reviews by senior people in parallel, in person, not sequentially. Good article.
Mack - Yes great point. Former SECAF James had the quote of the year so far.
“There were fewer checkers checking the checkers,” James said. “Don’t ever underestimate the ability of the Pentagon bureaucracy and these many, many reviews to slow the doggone thing down.”
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2023/01/10/building-a-better-bomber-how-the-stealthy-b-21-subverted-bureaucracy/