Assignment 5. The Pentagon Wars
Aliza Levinsky 22 / 03 / 2010 ISQS 5359 – Project Management Dr. Eric Walden
Introduction
The organizations presented in the movie the Pentagon War are, the Pentagon and the United States Armed Force. The Pentagon is the organization that is assigned to check the development of new projects; in this case the movie concentrates on the development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
The most important environmental factor that can be seen in the movie is the organizational culture. During the whole movie, we can see how there is a communication problem among the different departments and people involved in the design and testing of different projects. The Pentagon was working with the help of the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Marines in performing the weapon testing, this caused a difference in the way the organizations conducted their processes and operations. It is also noticeable the way the organization is managed inside,
the movie shows an atmosphere of corruption and
bureaucracy, where the head of each department is just interested in his own success and promotions, while not taking into account the decisions that benefit the project and the society. The initial idea of the project was developed in 1968 and the idea was to create an armored personnel carrier whose main objective is to bring troops to a combat zone swiftly, efficiently and safely. Its initial approach was to hold 11 men plus a driver. The need of this vehicle was to provide security to the American troops with the finest technology possible. The initial design of the Bradley changed a lot during the course of the years due to bad management and processes used in its elaboration. The final product was created with
low quality materials and a lack of proper design and adequate testing. The final design ended up being a troop transportation vehicle which could not carry troops (instead of 11 men it could only carry 6); a reconnaissance vehicle that’s too conspicuous to do reconnaissance, and a quasi-tank that has ve ry little armor. The main problem to be solved was to perform a good live test on the Bradley, since its main purpose was to bring troops in a safe manner. The congress appointed Colonel Burton from the Air force to ensure that the design of the product meets all the quality requirements needed. The entire test results were manipulated or not disclosed in their entirety. Everyone in the organization was focused on pursuing their own interests. This type of problem is very common in organizations where people don’t have a common goal to direct their actions. The technology that was being used for the development of the Bradley needed to be the best technology possible, mainly because it was human life at stake; and also good technology was needed to accomplish a competitive advantage for being able to export this vehicle to other countries. Apart from the technology the human resources needed to construct and manage the development of the Bradley were really important. They shouldered the responsibility to create a product with the necessary quality to get the soldiers in a battle field. . We can see that the people involved in the Bradley lacked the intensity of their sentiments to realize that the final product was actually protecting people’s lives, and ignoring anything could have a serious consequence of putting people’s lives at risk.
The project was funded by the US Congress, it was managed by the Pentagon and supervised by the, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The end users were the US Army soldiers whose main need was to arrive safely to the frontline. The project was being managed by Colonel Partridge, who was responsible for the success of the Bradley project under the supervision of the congress. Even though this structural hierarchy was established, many stakeholders were involved and everyone wanted to give their own viewpoints and suggestions to the final product, the pressure on the supervisors and the amount of people involved, made it hard to hold anyone accountable for the project. If general Burton would not have been sent to test the Bradley, the amount of risk involved in the project the money spent on the project would have grown exponentially as well as the time to finalize the actual product. In the end of the movie, they mention that pentagon sanctioned an additional one billion for “Capability upgrades”. Colonel Burton won his fight to have the Bradley modified, and all these modifications helped in reducing the causalities during its use in the Gulf War. Most of the officers involved in the Bradley were promoted and other went on to high paying positions in the defense industry, while Colonel Burton was forced to retire. This shows how the managers that were not totally involved or responsible were promoted due to the power of bureaucracy and the influences they had.
Analysis During the movie, it is flagrantly visible how the process or a formal methodology was absent completely. If we tried to analyze how the organization was managed in a normal methodology of analysis, design, implementation, testing and maintenance, we have the following: Analysis: The initial idea of the Bradley came to existence in 1968, the main
purpose was to create a vehicle that serves as efficient and fast transportation of 11 people to the field and their safety in the vehicle was the highest priority Design: Even though the initial idea was to create a vehicle to transport troops to
the field, after meeting the final requirements of all people involved in the design of the Bradley, the product ended up having unnecessary added features of scout, troop transport, antitank capabilities and a carrying capacity of 6 men instead of 11. And the most important thing was that it wasn’t safe. The lack of power from the engineering team, in this case of Smith, turned Bradley into a useless product when considering the original purpose of creating it. An example of this lack of power is that even though Smith knew from a report created by the British that aluminum armor burns, and emits a toxic gas when hit by a shell, Smith was ordered to use aluminum in the vehicle instead of steel to make it faster. Implementation: The trial done by Partridge was after 17 years the Bradley started
and with a total expenditure of 14 billion. At the end of the movie the narrator stated that the implementation took another year with an added expense of about a billion.
During the implementation phase, we can see that there is a lack of management. Many people could decide about the final design of the Bradley that constantly evoked changes in the final product. Testing: Even though some tests were conducted to measure the functionality of the
Bradley, none of them was a live test. We can see how during the whole movie, Burton was making all the efforts possible to make the final test that could prove that soldiers wouldn’t be safe. A way we can see in the movie this lack of interest in measuring the pitfalls of the final product is when Burton tried to do the test of the Bradley and the people in his team did the following actions:
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When he tried to test the Bradley with fuelThey put water instead
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When he tried to test the Bradley with sheep
They
incinerated the
evidence •
When he put mannequin in the Bradley
When
Burton went to pick a
phone call, they undressed the mannequin to prove that the cloth stayed untouched. Launching and maintenance: The final part of the movie tells us that the final
product was finished after a year of the trial. But following the sequence and way things were handled with the Bradley we can assume that little or no maintenance was done. Related to specific process, we can see the lack of the most important one, the implementation of project scope management; if this process would have been implemented there would have been understanding and a common direction among all members of the project team.
The project lacks a proper timeline; we know that the project started in 1968 and lasted for 17 years, the project cost the taxpayers 14 billion. A critical event was when the congress selected Burton to perform the Bradley tests. It was at this point that the direction of the project changed. Burton was a very honest person who was really focused on the final product; he wanted to make a live test on the vehicle to ensure the quality and safety of the troops during transportation. After the general’s inclusion to the project, he demonstrated his intentions; Dalton and all the commanders earlier followed the orders of Partridge, started supporting Burton and realized the important of creating a final quality product. We can see that at the beginning the motivation of the commanders was really low, because they thought that they could not make a difference, after Burton arrival people started to see that there was someone that was interested in making a difference, at the end we can even see that Dalton and the soldiers helped Burton to make the live test as realistic as possible, so that everyone knew the quality of the project. The requirements needed by the organization was to create a vehicle capable to transport troops to the field in a safe manner, the lack of a good management process and control related to a lack of control on the project scope, cost, and time which made the project go out of control for 17 years, The decision making process that was handled by the organization was not formal. Firstly we can see that General Partridge was responsible for making all the final decisions, which didn’t approach other people to decide and he always had the last word. In conjunction with this, we can see that when the big commanders wanted to make a change
in the design without a real basis or facts to support it , they were allowed to do it and the design team managed by Smith, had to follow any orders without their opinions being heard, even though they were the experts. I think that the bias that can be found here in the heuristic process of decision making is availability; this bias is because there was no true knowledge of what was happening. People didn’t know the real facts and the events that were taking place and this lack of information influenced the decision-making process, for example the congress didn’t get involved until General Burton made notice of how the project was progressing completely out of control. During the development of the Bradley we encountered a lot of problems, but the biggest one was the lack of management, this factor further encompasses a number of smaller problems as follows:
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Absence of scope Management.-Not a clear scope definition of what the final product needed to accomplish
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Lack of Risk Management.-In the growing amount of money and time that was being spent
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Lack of Communication management.-horizontally between peers and also vertically, the movie shows a strong lack of support from the superiors.
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Bad organizational environment: like they say good apples get spoilt in a bad barrel.
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Internal managers and workers have no connection with the customer.-The managers in charge of the project were just worried about their promotion and position rather than focusing their efforts in meeting the safety requirements of the soldiers.
The organization has an absence and process mapping. As mentioned earlier there
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is a lack of methodology that is required to make the final product successful. These problems were addressed after some consequences already took place, and some factors like the time and money spent where so much that it was hard to remedy. Through the integration of Burton into the project, a complete metamorphosis took place in the way the big commanders were involved in the project and smoothed out the problems that the project was encountering. At the end, we can say that the project was successful, the live test was done on Bradley and all the shortcomings and the quality issues with the product were uncovered. The necessary modifications were made to the application. At this point in time the project was over budget by an expenditure of 14 billion and over schedule by 17 years. Thanks to Burton’s intervention, the final goal of the project was achieved, this vehicle was used the Gulf War to transport troops in a safe manner. Therefore we can conclude that the final objective of the stakeholders was accomplished, even though at a big expense due to the lack of management and compromise on numerous areas within the project.
Conclusion
In conclusion I would say that the congress and the US army lacked in good project management practices in the Bradley development and other projects that were managed by them like the sensor fused anti-tank missile and the Pave-way bomb. This lack of methodology, process and supervision made the project go out of control and have an expenditure of 14 billion and span over 17 years. Until a person from the outside, in this case general Burton was assigned to validate the test of Bradley; no attempt was made to manage the project in an ethical manner and for the benefit of the society, instead they pursued their own interests. I think that the major lesson that we can get out of the project is that we need to form a strong team devoted and committed to the daily activities and a good leader to manage th e development of the project. Apart from this, there should be a clear definition of a scope to avoid the project going out of control. If I could give and advise to this organization I would suggest that they change the managers and the leaders to people who are really committed to the project, people who are honest and are able to make decisions which doesn’t only involve their own interests. At the end of the movie we can see that the only person with a potential to change the organization was fired, while the people who lacked the responsibility and moral principles were promoted. I would also recommend the use of many project management principles and follow well established norms that can help the organization to succeed in more projects, if the
PMBOK is followed, they can make use of the 9 knowledge areas, the most impactful areas that can be implemented are
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Project integration management.-The use of this process can help to have a consensus and a clear vision from all stakeholders so that the final product really matches the organizational needs.
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Project time management .-This process will help define the activities needed to complete each project and establish the amount of time needed to complete them, this process will help the projects be in control.
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Project cost management.-The use of this process will allow to establish from the beginning a budget and give the stakeholders with an overview of the expenditure that the project will incur.
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Project quality management-With the use of this principle the organization can handle the requisite tests on the products and make sure that they meet the necessary standards and quality control limits as expected.
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Project communication management - This process will help maintain an organizational structure with an established flow of communication and will help to distribute the information in a correct and timely manner. This will help bring transparency into the organization keeping everyone abreast of the events and avoid that the processes goes out of control.
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Project risk management -This process will help identify the potential risks that the enterprise can face and create contingency plans to deal with them in case they occur. This will also help the organization to maintain projects within the
established boundaries, and to avoid factors like time and cost to go out of control. I would like to end this assignment by saying that I really enjoyed the movie. It allowed me to relate many concepts I had read in the books and apply them in real life situations. Something that I found quite interesting is that even though, the movie is related to the design of a war vehicle, many problems and situations presented are the ones as I have previously experienced at work. References: The Pentagon Wars Movie
