Critical Success Factors and Their Application to DOD Weapon System Acquisition

Department of Defense weapon systems are growing more complex and expensive and the services are under increasing pressure from Congress to improve the cost schedule and performance of their weapons programs. The purpose of this project was to investigate and provide an overview of issues within the DoD acquisition system and provide information to assist program managers in dealing with some of the challenges they face. The goal of this project was to identify Critical Success Factors and determine if they could be applied to DoD acquisition programs in order to improve the acquisition process and provide program managers with a tool to assist them with managing a complex program.