Management

Your reading requirements and collaboration with others in the discussion is designed to expose you to the program management process employed throughout the Department of Defense today. After gaining a better understanding of Program management history, roles, responsibilities, and authority of a program manager, you will be able to answer the first discussion question:

What would necessitate the Department of Defense (DoD) to have a structured, regulated, and robust acquisition system?

Now, if you are now familiar with NCMA, you should be. Take a quick look at this Youtube video. It does run 22 minutes and give you valuable insights into what is the NCMA. Enjoy. You might find some interesting ideas to help answer this question for this week’s Discussion or a new direction to think.

ANSWER

Department of Defense Acquisition System

What would necessitate the DoD to have a structured, regulated, and robust acquisition system?

The acquisition process within the department of defense entails the management process of the defense program. The acquisition system is the management technique through which the defense department acquires weapons and other systems. The acquisition system of the department of defense can be extremely complicated and may fail to meet the projected goals of performance expectations (McKernan, Drezner, and Sollinger, 2015). The department of defense obtains goods from shipyards and contractors to facilitate military operations. Therefore, the DoD needs to have a regulated, structured, and robust acquisition system. These will ensure the compliance of major acquisitions and implement an adaptive acquisition framework that is designed to make the process speed and agile thus boosting its efficiency in the defense department.

Considerably, the acquisition process in the DoD needs to be structured since the acquisition process is not similar. Therefore, they need to be structured to the descriptions of the weapons or equipment being acquired. The regulatory structure should be used to control defense acquisitions as well as the current terms and conditions.  The defense acquisition system relies on milestones to manage and direct the acquisition process. The defense department acquisition system relies on the procedures outlined in the defense acquisition guidebook to meet specific regulatory and statutory requirements before proceeding to the acquisition process.

NCMA is used to prove the mastery of essential contract management strategies, concepts, and tools. NCMA also allows one to validate their skills and experience in the field as well as show potential employers that they are up to date with the latest techniques and developments within contract management. Therefore, NCMA strives to attain the highest professional standards and performing the profession with the best ability. NCMA has challenged the contract management professions to conduct their jobs in a manner that benefits the employer without violating regulations, laws, and corporate policies to achieve the central duty of the profession.

References

McKernan, M., Drezner, J. A., & Sollinger, J. M. (2015). Tailoring the acquisition process in the US Department of Defense. RAND NATIONAL DEFENSE RESEARCH INST SANTA MONICA CA.