Classification of Schedule Management Barriers Through Concept Mapping

Barriers to adoption of schedule management processes are a matter of serious concern to the acquisition community. Schedule management has been widely accepted to contribute to the successful execution of complicated system development processes since the 1950s. However, studies of recent acquisition failures illustrate that over the last 15 years, there has been significant internal resistance to the adoption of schedule management processes. This exploratory effort used concept mapping to identify and classify the types of barriers existing in the Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC). A series of open-ended questions were posed to four experienced program managers in ASC. Units of Analysis were extracted from the survey responses, and grouped and sorted by a representative set of proxy sorters. Multidimensional scaling was applied to the sorted groups to indentify affinity of the responses, and cluster analysis was employed to identify emerging themes from the program manager responses. The results indicated 10 barrier groups, which can be mapped using two conceptual axes (internal-external, and tactical-strategic). As a result of this analysis, a series of focused recommendations are provided to the ASC Acquisition Center of Excellence to improve acceptance and adoption of schedule management practices.