7.13. Process Management for Skeptics (or The Case for Process Management in Modern Naval System Development)

The need for large, complex systems has fostered a need for large, multi-disciplined organizations to design, build, and maintain them. At the same time, customers of large, complex systems are demanding unprecedented levels of efficiency and quality. To achieve these demands, builders of complex systems must employ a formal mechanism for managing their design and development processes. Understanding and controlling top-level processes across large multi-disciplined organizations, alliances, or consortia, is referred to as “Process Management”. To be successful, any process management activity must have the understanding, input and support of all key participants. This paper was originally developed as a step in getting that understanding and support, especially from domain specialists without any process engineering experience. The arguments presented here are applicable specifically to a large Navy development program, but they may be useful in gaining process management understanding for the development of other complex systems.