Strategic Planning and Management in Defense Systems Acquisition

Abstract

Strategic Planning and Management (SP&M) methods are widely used in the commercial sector and are a required organizational activity within the U.S. Government. More specifically, defense acquisition organizations use SP&M methods to strengthen the management of defense acquisition organizations/programs. This article reports results of a survey of the defense acquisition community that assessed how SP&M methods and practices promote management effectiveness. The results show that SP&M is viewed as valuable to Department of Defense systems acquisition programs and organizations. Moreover, this effort identified high-value activities, tools, processes, practices, and common roadblocks to effective SP&M. These results imply that training on processes and tool use can be very important, especially for senior leaders, and implementation assistance can also be useful.