Recommended Books: Organizing for a Complex World: Developing Tomorrow's Defense and Net-Centric Systems (Significant Issues Series)
Title:      Organizing for a Complex World: Developing Tomorrow's Defense and Net-Centric Systems (Significant Issues Series)
Authors:      Guy Ben-Ari, Pierre A. Chao
ISBN-10(13):      9780892065516
Publisher:      Center for Strategic & International Studies
Publication date:      2009-01-22
Edition:     
Language:      English
Price:      $21.95
Rating:      0 
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Description:      Product Description
Government agencies, primarily the U.S. Department of Defense, currently face an unparalleled leap in complexity as the information revolution presents opportunities to create large, complex net-centric systems-of-systems. Furthermore, individual weapon systems are becoming more intricate as more technology is inserted, requirements mount, and capabilities increase. Gaining maximum benefit from these innovations requires not only overcoming the technical challenges, but also confronting fundamental and profound policy, organizational, and doctrinal issues.

When faced with complicated challenges in the past, the defense community developed new management and analytical tools, created new organizational structures, and fundamentally changed governance structures and policies. In the early days of the Cold War, for example, PERT (program evaluation and review technique) was developed to help manage the Polaris Missile program, and the Federally Funded Research and Development Centers were created. Currently, however, creative thinking on how to grapple with complexity has been in short supply.

This book presents a wide range of new perspectives on the complexity challenges facing the Department of Defense and the industrial base that supports it. In 10 chapters covering topics such as governance mechanisms, competition and innovation, system-of-systems engineering, system integration, and program management, the authors provide a comprehensive view on complexity in a national defense context and present the latest thinking on how to turn complexity from an insurmountable hurdle into an opportunity to be exploited.

   

Reviews
A Really Great Overview with Lots of Perspectives and Information - about the perspective of defense systems
2009-04-21 09:34:46 Berthold Kastel 4.5 

Summary

This book definitely focuses on the defense industry. In ten independent articles it gives unique perspectives on typical issues of initiating and designing defense systems. As often is the case, it addresses the complex systems (and systems of systems) being built from the systems aspect of designing, procuring and building those systems and sub-systems. 

 

Detailed Review

Divided into ten chapters, written by as many different experts in project management, this book comprehensively covers a wide range of topics that relate to the defense industry. The overarching theme is that the projects in the defense industry have an unmatched level of complexity, in their management and in their output, and this leads to unusual challenges for procurement, governance, and management. 

By allowing each contributor about a dozen pages on average, this ensures that information is condensed and well-prepared. The individual chapters can even be used as a quick reference. 

As with many similar books I wished for more clarity and coherence in the basic definitions and terminology. The aspect of \\\"systems\\\" and net-centricity can be applied in at least three ways: to the products, to the industry and societal context, and to the organization of the projects that build the products in the contextual ecosystem. 

The chapters are:

  • Introduction: Framing the COmplexity Challenge (Guy Ben-Ari and Matthew Zlatnik)
  • Making Governance matter More: Oversight, Insight, and Foresight in Complex Systems Procurement (Michael Schrage)
  • Models for Governing Large Systems Projects (Harvey M. Sapolsky)
  • Competition and Innovation under Complexity (Jeffrey A. Drezner)
  • Systems Integration for Complex Defense Projects (Eugene Gholz)
  • A New Way of Thinking about Enterprise Capability Development: Network-Centric, Enterprise-Wide System-of-Systems Engineering (Jeremy M. Kaplan)
  • Engineering of Complex Systems: Challenge in the Theory and Practice (Douglas O. Norman)
  • Managing Megaprojects: Lessons for Future COmbat Systems (Marco Iansiti)
  • Managing Government Effectively in a Complex Environment: Influencing Networks through the Network Campaign (W. Scott Gould and Julie M. Anderson)
  • Human Capital for Complexity (David H. Dombkins)
Recommendation
This book is definitely a good introduction into the complexity of initiating and executing major projects of the modern defense industry. As a quick read, each of the ten chapters gets a well-founded point across that is worthwhile knowing about. I wish this book is read by as many political decision-makers in the defense industry as possible. It could definitely lead to a better appreciation of the systemic reasons that the \\\"military-industrial complex\\\" functions the way it does.