root cause analysis

When we wake up in the morning we enter the day with a set of assumptions about ourselves, our environment, and the world around us.  So too when we undertake projects.  I’ve just returned from the latest NDIA IPMD meeting in Washington, D.C. and the most intriguing presentation at the meeting was given by Irv Blickstein regarding a RAND root cause analysis of major program breaches.  In short, a major breach in the cost of a program is defined by the Nunn-McCurdy amendment that was first passed in 1982, in which a major defense program breaches its projected baseline cost by more than 15%.