Project Lesson

Categories of Systemic Lessons

Requirements and specifications must be well defined and agreed before contract signature.

Where detailed specifications cannot be defined fully prior to contract signature, such as when systems definition and new design work must be undertaken within a developmental project phase, then the end capability requirements and priorities must be well defined and agreed.

Requirements Management

A fundamental issue to consider at the time of capability and project definition is how the capability should be acquired. If the project is developmental, then consideration should be given to methods other than a fixed price contract for achieving the capability.

Contracts should include appropriate clauses that recognise the complexities of verifying and validating a software development project.

Multi platform upgrades should allow for implementation and testing/acceptance of the first platform without committing to a full class upgrade of all platforms.

Conducting an upgrade of an existing capability concurrent with scheduled maintenance availability requires very detailed planning and careful consideration of the supporting contract clauses.

Contract Management

Schedule Management

First of Type Equipment

Procurements that include significant change to software-intensive systems and complex system integration have many inherently high-risk activities, which must be analysed and appropriate risk mitigation processes applied. Such risks are often under-estimated in the planning phase.

First of Type Equipment

The contract schedule must be accepted by all parties as realistic and achievable from the outset. Each party must be committed to achievement of the schedule and aware of the consequences of non-achievement, plus any provisions for delay outside the contractor's control.

The contract should contain:

•  milestones which enable the Commonwealth to unambiguously assess Contractor performance from the outset of the Contract;

•  with the exception of non-recurring engineering effort, payment of all or a substantial part of the contract price should be subject to achievement of clear project milestones;

•  milestones should reflect delivery of contracted requirements to the Commonwealth, not just reaching intermediate points on the timeline;

•  milestones which enable use of the equipment and supplies (such as integrated logistics support and training) should be given similar weight as delivery of the equipment itself;

•  payment on achievement of milestones should be conditional on achievement of previously scheduled milestones;

•  payment of milestones should also be tied to remedies under the contract to allow the Commonwealth to seek redress; and

•  clear entitlements of the Commonwealth to access all contractor project data (including internal workforce planning data) so as to be able to make informed assessments if a milestone is not achieved.

Contract Management

For very large developmental contracts, project managers must ensure that the contractor maintains sufficient focus and resourcing on documenting what is being delivered and how to use it (through ILS, configuration management and training).

Milestones must be structured so that the contractor is not tempted to focus on equipment deliverables only. Payment for equipment milestones should be conditional on achievement of related ILS milestones.

The contract should be clear on configuration management requirements of ILS products in an incremental delivery software development project. This should align to milestones and remedies in the contract.

Contract Management

Requirements Management

Objective acceptance criteria are required to ensure there is no scope for dispute as to whether the criteria have been met.

Criteria for determining contractual achievement should support those criteria used by Defence for determining achievement by DMO of the measures of effectiveness in the MAA.

Contract Management

Requirements Management

Major maritime software development should be incremental and delivery does not have to be aligned with the platform modification program.

First of Type Equipment

Requirements Management

Implement a progressive acceptance methodology from the outset for all project data/ documentation supplies and requirements acceptance objective quality evidence in order to progressively increase confidence of all stakeholders involved with regard to project outcomes.

Contract Management