Contract & Life-Cycle Perspective

We generally are working on development contracts. These contracts build and deliver stuff; hardware, software and procedures. The contract ends with sell off. Hardware, software and procedures for operating the system are done and delivered at sell off. Situations where the developer contractor will operate portions of the delivered system, and especially when the development team is staffed with those potential operators, can foster an attitude of “we can fix it, (solve it/design it) in operations”, (we can therefore avoid the analysis).

Especially when the system engineering staff is populated from he ranks of former operators, program management must, in my opinion, actively counter this perception with the novice systems engineers.

Multi-contract life-cycle:

Contract A à Contract B à (P) Contract X

Contract A: Development

            Concept phase — Up to PDR

            Dem/Val Phase — Up to CDR

            Full Scale Development Phase — Post CDR

            Sell off Phase — DD250

Contract B: O&M

            Operations

            Maintenance

Contract C: New Mods

            New ECPs

 

Proposal Teams-

Fire the proposal team.  Proposals have the 'sure we can do that' mentality; developers must always stay focused on what was bid, what's in scope!

 

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