A Total Systems Life Cycle View on Reducing Cycle Time

Program Manager, May, 2000 by Brian Brodfuehrer

"Three Lenses Provide the Right Customer Focus"

As far back as the 1986 Packard Commission, reducing cycle time was recognized as crucial to any genuine reform of DoD's acquisition system. According to the Commission's report, A Formula for Action, "An unreasonably long acquisition cycle -- 10 to 15 years for our major weapon systems ... is a central problem from which most other acquisition problems stem:

* It leads to unnecessarily high cost of development...

* It leads to obsolete technology in our fielded equipment...

* It aggravates the very gold plating that is one of its causes...."

This article looks at cycle time reductions from a total systems life cycle perspective. The total systems life cycle perspective ensures that short-term reductions in the development cycle are not lost later through delays in maintaining and modifying the system. Such short-term reductions and savings may lead to unsatisfied customers and higher long-term operations and support costs.

Also in this article, I describe industry best practices, providing a systems view of cycle time reduction, including a list of tools to apply and a list of factors that influence applications of the tools. From my perspective as an instructor at the Defense Systems Management College, this article continues my efforts to emphasize and support development of creative problem-solving skills for application to program management scenarios requiring quick reaction and astute change management.

Framework for a Total Systems View

"Reducing Cycle Time" means providing a capability to a customer in less time. In the commercial arena, reducing cycle time might mean getting a new product to market in less time than the previous product version, important because of the need to stay ahead of the competition. The time to get that product to market, the macro-cycle, is made up of micro-cycles all contributing in some way to that top-level time metric. These micro-cycles, or sub-processes, consist of different activities that, together, make up the product development process. These include such functions as requirements definition; the analysis and decomposition of the requirements into designs and drawings; and the production and testing of systems (both hardware and software) for delivery to the customer. Looking at the DoD system in an analogous way, the macro-cycle is the time it takes the acquisition community to deliver supportable products to the customers, the requirements community (users), or the warfighters.

Three interlinked systems -- the acquisition process; the requirements process; and the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System process - define this macro-cycle. The most effective treatment of cycle time reduction would address changes at the macro level of each of these three different systems. However, making changes at a level encompassing these three systems is generally out of the scope of influence of most program managers; thus, the focus of this article is on achieving cycle time reductions within the constraints of the three macro-systems, not from trying to change those systems.

The process program managers can best influence is the acquisition process of the specific systems they manage. Focusing on cycle time reductions at that level can contribute to an overall reduction in the time it takes to deliver a capability to the warfighter. Ideally, these reductions will be achieved by managers at the Program Office level as they work with their industry counterparts, functional support staff, working Integrated Product Teams (IPT), and customers.

Scope of the Term "Reducing Cycle Time"

"Where over the product's life is this cycle' that is being reduced?" "Where is the cycle measured?" The more important question we might first ask is, 'What cycles are important to customers?" The answer to that question is embodied in time as viewed through three different lenses:

* First is the initial time to get the product (acquisition cycle time). Reducing that time results in a quicker response to the defined threat, mission need, or operational requirement.

* Second is the time it takes to support (maintain and repair) the system (logistics cycle time). [1] Reducing that cycle time improves the availability of the system to support mission requirements quickly and consistently

* Third is the time it takes to improve or upgrade the system to respond to new threats or requirements, to fix system shortfalls, or to improve system reliability (evolutionary cycle time).

Therefore, when an acquisition strategy is developed to "reduce cycle time," it should, at a minimum, address issues that arise when looking at the problem from at least these three views. Understandably, delivering a product to warfighters quickly but leaving them with a system that 1) does not meet performance expectations; 2) cannot be easily maintained; or 3) cannot be improved when the threat changes, has not effectively reduced cycle time from the long-term perspective.

Motivation to Reduce Cycle Time