Author Description

Government agencies, primarily the U.S. Department of Defense, currently face an unparalleled leap in complexity as the information revolution presents opportunities to create large, complex net-centric systems-of-systems. Furthermore, individual weapon systems are becoming more intricate as more technology is inserted, requirements mount, and capabilities increase. Gaining maximum benefit from these innovations requires not only overcoming the technical challenges, but also confronting fundamental and profound policy, organizational, and doctrinal issues. When faced with complicated challenges in the past, the defense community developed new management and analytical tools, created new organizational structures, and fundamentally changed governance structures and policies. In the early days of the Cold War, for example, PERT (program evaluation and review technique) was developed to help manage the Polaris Missile program, and the Federally Funded Research and Development Centers