U.S. Military Program Management

CHAPTER1

Toward Centralized Control of Defense Acquisition Programs: A Comparative Review of the Decision Framework from 1987 to 2003

By John T. Dillard

The issuance of Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5000.1¹ and Instruction 5000.2² on May 12, 2003, marked the third significant revision of acquisition policy in as many years. Looking further back, these three revisions of regulatory guidance had evolved from two previous versions in 1991³ and 1996.⁴ Each had its major thrusts and tenets and—perhaps of most importance to program managers—modifications to the Defense Systems Acquisition Management Process⁵ or Defense Acquisition Framework,⁶ which is the broad paradigm of phases and milestone reviews in the life of an acquisition program. ...