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Today's Hypocrisy Lesson | 5 comments (5 topical)

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It's not just the proposal writing phase (5.00 / 1) (#3)
by jerry on Sun Nov 11, 2007 at 12:21:40 PM EST
It's the entire process.  Everyone by now is well versed in what a great idea it was for Rockwell to spread B-1 contracts to all 50 states.  So the winning contractor, with encouragement from various customers and their legislators all collude to make sure projects are unkillable and progress is reported with the best spin.

I have worked on absolutely immense projects and if you examined the progress that everyone reports, you'll find the project is ALWAYS 100% on schedule.  In my engineer's eyes, that tells me right away that the project isn't reporting progress accurately, but people are loathe to report anything but 100% progress.

Part of the problem is a) the sheer size of many of these contracts, coupled b) the do or die nature of success.  Failure on many of these contracts means loss of jobs for thousands of employees, and perhaps closing of a factory.

NASA a few years ago started off with the right idea, "faster, leaner, cheaper" with an intent to accept higher rates of failure.  But no one could accept the failure, and if you can't accept failure, you're not going to make the process faster, leaner, or cheaper.

I would actually like to see a lot more contracts, all issued for a lot less money that demanded less "process overhead" but required results.  Build incrementally on proven results with the ability to change courses.

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Today's Hypocrisy Lesson | 5 comments (5 topical)

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