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Home page  About CSIS Programs International Security Program Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group Organizing for a Complex World
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Organizing for a Complex World
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In partnership with the M.I.T. Security Studies Program, and the support of the OSD Systems and Software Engineering Directorate, the CSIS Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group launch the project “Organizing for a Complex World: Designing, Developing and Deploying Complex Weapon and Net-centric Systems -- Lessons of the Past and the Way Forward”, focusing on one of the most challenging issues facing the Department of Defense today: the development and fielding of large, complex, systems-of-systems.
When faced with prior leaps in complexity, the defense community invested in and developed new management and analytical tools, created new organizational structures and fundamentally changed policies. For example, in the early days of the Cold War, PERT was developed to help manage the Polaris Missile program and new organizational constructs such as the FFRDC were created. Today, the Department of Defense faces a similar leap in complexity as the information revolution presents the opportunity to create large, complex net-centric systems-of-systems. Furthermore, individual weapon systems are becoming more complex 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. Both Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England and Undersecretary of Defense (AT&L) Ken Krieg have identified the issue as critical.
The CSIS/M.I.T. project takes on two major topics:
- How do you best organize to create these large systems-of-systems/system architectures and more complex weapon systems?
- What metrics, tools, and analytics can policy makers/managers use to assess, measure and manage these system-of-system integration/architecture integration projects and more complex weapon systems?
The intent of the program is to assist policy makers in framing the issue, build a community of interest and help develop the intellectual tools required to address the issue.
CSIS has convened five workshops focusing on a particular aspect of the identified topics. Workshop #1 What is a “Smart Buyer” in a Complex World?
Workshop #2 Defining Complex Systems
Workshop #3 Competition and Innovation
Workshop #4 Measuring Complexity
Workshop #5 Strategies for Managing Complexity
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