The classic Iron Triangle of lore - Cost, Schedule, and Quality, has to go. The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) approved H.R. 5013, the IMPROVE Acquisition Act. This Act is bipartisan legislation to overhaul defense acquisition spending, potentially saving billions of taxpayer dollars and expediting the process to get the necessary equipment to our warfighters.
The legislation is based on the recommendations outlined in the final report of the Panel on Defense Acquisition Reform plus an amendment regarding whether EVM should be related to quality and technical performance measures. (The original news of the efforts to pass this bill comes from Paul Solomon of Performance Based Earned Value).
The connections between the top level variables on a project are Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance.
This is not a renaming of the Quality, although quality is a Technical Performance Measure.
What is a Technical Performance Measure?
- A plan of the expected technical achievement by which the actual progress is measured or tested
- Tools that show how well a system is satisfying its requirements or meeting its goals
- Provide assessment of the product and the processes through design, implementation, and test
Here are some examples, one notional and one actual. The first is notional, shows how some technical performance measure - in this case vehicle weight is PLANNED to be reduced over time. The upper and lower limits of the PLANNED vehicle weight are shown as the tolerance band. At specific points in the program, the vehicle weight is assessed through a review process to determine if we're on track to make the target weigh in the future.
Here's an actual TPM for an actual program. Chandra is an X-Ray telescope managed out of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. There are several "targets" here that follow on increasing compliance path as the program progresses.
Why Quality in the Iron Triangle is Poor Project Management
Quality speaks to only one dimension of the product or services technical performance. The term Technical Performance is how the produce or service performances compared to it's technical specifications. If during the development cycle, this performance is not measured, then it is not possible to state with any confidence that the project is on-schedule and on-cost.
Failure to understand this is a common - probably THE common cause - of project failure. To toss off the phrase the Iron Triangle fails to "connect the dots" between the three core variables of any project.
For more background see the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Technical Performance Measure site.
How Put TPMs To Work
Measures of Performance (MoP) and Measures of Effectiveness (MoE) of the product, service, and work efforts on the project impact future cost and schedule. Without connects the Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance, you're managing the project by looking in the rear view mirror. Take a look at the OSD site for some starting guidance. In June there will be a three part session at EVM World 2010 on these three topics. Presentations will be available at the PMI College of Performance Management site. PMI-CPM is a "college" (one of two) in PMI where all things "performance management" are discussed. These really means Earned Value. While a large percentage of the members are from the defense community, there is construction and a smattering of IT.
