Program Manager Decision Making in Complex and Chaotic Program Environments

Abstract

Our project focuses on the decision-making process of a program manager. A defense program manager is routinely exposed to chaotic and complex environments that require skilled leadership and decision-making. Exploring the decision-making process in these environments may help current and future defense programs to better project the outcome of future decisions. Through our research, we identified five categories as decision-making pitfalls for PMs: overly optimistic, risk aversion, stovepipe design, strategic networking in the acquisition environment, and communication skills. We recommend conducting future research to validate the findings of our study. Once validated, we recommend refining PM training to focus on the decision-making categories we identified to help PMs navigate programs more successfully.