Leading Practices: Agency Acquisition Policies Could Better Implement Key Product Development Principles

Abstract

Each year, the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) together invest billions of dollars to acquire complex, hardware- and software-centric systems to provide critical defense, security, and space capabilities. Given the amount of federal funds spent and the critical missions these agencies support, Congress and agencies have consistently underscored the importance of achieving efficiencies and effectiveness across these acquisition activities. The GAO has also contributed to these efforts, and agencies and Congress have acted on many of the GAO's recommendations, including taking steps toward implementing knowledge-based acquisition frameworks, which the GAO's prior work found is essential to improving performance. Nonetheless, the GAO's annual assessments of major acquisition programs at each agency continue to find that programs often take significantly longer, cost more than initially estimated, and in some cases deliver final products with less capability than anticipated. Leading companies would not be able to sustain such outcomes without potentially going out of business. This dynamic correspondingly drives leading companies to undertake a disciplined approach to product development—one that is instructive to government acquisition, despite environmental differences. Throughout an individual product’s development, leading companies often confront difficult tradeoff decisions, such as options about design requirements, technical solutions, and where and when to launch a promised solution. These decisions are largely informed by the incentive to be first to market within a globalized marketplace and win enduring customer support.