Charting the life cycle of the acquisition of a weapon system

I have occasionally made the simple statement that the life cycle of the procurement process is much broader than typically conceptualized.

Not only is it broader, it is infinitely more complex than I had imagined.

(Click to enlarge; right click to open in new tab/window.)

The picture above is a static chart developed as

"a classroom aid for Defense Acquisition University students. It provides a notional illustration of interfacesamong three major decision support systems used to develop, produce and field a weapon system for national defense. Defense acquisition is a complex process with many more activities than shown here and many concurrent activities that cannot be displayed on a two-dimensional chart. Supporting information is on back of this chart. For more information, see the Defense Acquisition Portal (http://dap.dau.mil)."

The actual chart is active with many live links to other definitions and sources, which simply adds even more complexity to the whole process. You can get an interactive view of the chart, or a hyperlinkded pdf version of it, here.

For people who might say, "procurement is not rocket science", I'd just refer them to this chart. It may not be rocket science, but it is high level management.