Executive Summary
This Naval Postgraduate School thesis analyzes the alignment of DoD Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA) rapid prototyping programs with best practices and its impact on program outcomes. It finds that successful programs generally exhibit stronger alignment with technology maturity and business case practices, while overall documentation of best practices is inconsistent. The study suggests that domain-specific evaluation frameworks may be more effective than aggregated cross-domain criteria for assessing MTA programs.
Why It Matters
This analysis provides critical insights into the effectiveness of the DoD's rapid acquisition pathways, informing policymakers and program managers on how to improve the delivery of capabilities to warfighters.
Key Takeaways
- DoD MTA rapid prototyping programs show varying alignment with best practices, with successful programs demonstrating stronger alignment in technology maturity and business case practices.
Source evidence · PDF page 108
The findings indicate that DoD MTA rapid prototyping programs demonstrated varying levels of documented alignment with selected acquisition best practices constructs across AIR/DAVE program artifacts. Alignment differed across program status categories, military Services, and construct domains, programs associated with more favorable outcomes generally demonstrated stronger documented alignment in areas such as technology maturity and business-case-related practices.
- Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at program entry is an influential factor differentiating successful from unsuccessful MTA programs, with successful programs having significantly higher TRLs.
Source evidence · PDF page 111
Regarding the relationships between successful and unsuccessful MTA rapid prototyping programs, technology readiness at program entry appears to be an influential factor that differentiates successful from unsuccessful programs, although the risk of sampling error due to the low sample size of unsuccessful programs makes inferential conclusions imprudent. Though successful programs demonstrate a 57% higher TRL (Mean = 1.566) than unsuccessful programs (Mean = 0.997).
- Evaluating MTA programs with domain-specific criteria rather than aggregated cross-domain frameworks may provide a clearer understanding of how best practices operate in practice.
Source evidence · PDF page 111
A potential implication of these findings is that evaluating MTA rapid prototyping programs using aggregated or cross-domain evaluation criteria might obscure how these various constructs operate in practice. This suggests that future oversight and assessment frameworks could benefit from placing greater emphasis on domain-specific alignments rather than cross-domain evaluation frameworks.
Strategic Relevance
Improving defense acquisition processes, particularly rapid prototyping, is strategically vital for maintaining technological superiority and ensuring timely delivery of critical capabilities to the warfighter. This research helps refine those processes.