Interview with Marvin Sambur, assistant secretary of the Air Force : pathfinder program testing the potential of spiral arms development - Acquisition - Evolutionary Acquisition - Cover Story

Program Manager, July-August, 2003

The cornerstone of Marvin Sam bur's efforts to bring a "warlike mentality" to Air Force acquisition is captured in his initiatives under the banner of "Agile Acquisition." Three Agile Acquisition initiatives--Collaborative Requirements Development, Seamless Verification in Testing, and Technology Transfer--are the foundation for Agile Acquisition and were approved by Sambur in February this year for implementation.

These initiatives aim to get equipment to the field quickly through use of a technique or strategy called evolutionary acquisition. In the following discussion, Sambur responds to a series of questions from Program Manager and talks about his efforts to "jump start" these initiatives as tested in the "Pathfinder" programs.

Q When you started on this job in November 2001, what did you see as your major problems?

A Two major problems. The long time it took the acquisition system to deliver new capability to the warfighters; and out credibility--we were perceived as delivering late, delivering less than promised, and at greater costs.

Q Did you have an answer?

A I certainly had a challenge. Let me give you some background on the creation of an initiative nicknamed Agile Acquisition.

Right about the time that I became the Assistant Secretary, the Air Force held a series of senior management meetings in the fall and winter of 2001/2002. We wanted to jump start changes to the acquisition system. Secretary of the Air Force James Roche sought to foster a culture of innovation and reasonable risk taking and gave us some tough goals. He wanted to shorten the acquisition cycle times, i.e., deliver today's technology today; and wanted a flexible system that would allow us to quickly insert new technologies into systems throughout their life cycles. His bottom line was to build credibility with our customers--the warfighters. For me, the question was how to do this. My answer Agile Acquisition!

Q What is included in your Agile Acquisition initiative?

A Agile Acquisition is our strategy to get capability to the warfighter quickly and to build our credibility. It is based on the simple premise of working together--collaboration--among four key groups: the requirers, the technologists, the testers, and the acquirer, who will all improve the system. It consists of three separate initiatives all requiring close collaboration with these same groups.

Collaborative Requirements Process

The first initiative is called "Collaboration Requirements Process." In the past, the warfighters developed their requirements, tossed them over the wall, and we tried to translate their needs into contract documents. We often missed the point and this increased the time to field and test systems, and often left the participants unhappy with the results.

By working together as a team at the outset when requirements are first developed, the acquisition and technology professionals could provide immediate feedback to the requirer on technology and development issues, while the testers would be involved to ensure that what was required could be tested. This ensures that we understand what the testers are really looking for, plus we will be able to provide them with a realistic assessment of our ability to accomplish what they want.

Focused Technology Transfer

This leads directly to our next initiative--Focused Technology Transfer. Once we know what the warfighters want, the question to ask and answer is obvious: Is the technology available? The Technology Transfer initiative is designed to closely link research and development efforts in the labs to fine specific needs of programs. By fostering a closer working relationship with the labs and the program offices, the labs will understand program needs.

With this understanding, the labs will be able to adjust their projects to directly contribute to delivering military capability to the warfighter. The result we want is to have the labs realign high-priority limited resources to focus on bringing high-value technology to a higher technology readiness level--ready for integration into a new weapons system.

Seamless Verification

The final initiative--Seamless Verification--is designed to bring testers in early, to get their advice on testability of requirements and their early involvement in developing a test strategy. And then the key element of Seamless Verification is to remove the seams, at least as it makes sense, between DT [Developmental Testing] and OT [Operational Testing].

As most acquisition people know, the barriers between DT and OT testing were treated as almost "sacrosanct." This limited out ability to learn from what happened. Our approach was to reduce the overlap, which wastes time and resources. While we have to protect the impartiality and integrity of OT&E [Operational Test and Evaluation], much of the DT&E [Developmental Test and Evaluation] effort could be separately evaluated for OT&E purposes--let's remove the seams!

Q We have heard a lot about the Pathfinder programs. How did they get started?