CAIV and Evolutionary Acquisition
Background
CAIV is a methodology for reducing Total Ownership Cost and improving
performance. It involves developing, setting, and refining aggressive
unit production cost objectives and O&S cost objectives while meeting
warfighter requirements. It is essential to involve the user community
in the tradeoff process from the beginning to achieve the best outcome
for all parties involved. But like any good investment, applying CAIV
is not free. It is necessary to invest resources in the tradeoff
analyses required in the up-front requirement generation process. One
of the most important aspects of making CAIV a success is investing in
the training of key personnel and making sure the CAIV process is
understood.
Under Secretary of Defense (AT&L) E.C. Aldridge established CAIV
implementation as one of his key metrics under his first acquisition
goal, "achieve credibility and effectiveness in the acquisition and
logistics support process." Under this goal, he approved a metric to
require, by the end of FY02, 100% of defense programs to incorporate a
CAIV plan and to have an evolutionary acquisition or spiral development
plan in place. These plans are to be discrete parts of each ACAT I
program's acquisition strategy and will be executed throughout the
acquisition cycle and updated as necessary.
In a January 2002 memorandum, Under Secretary Aldridge instructed the
R-TOC Working Group to develop DoD templates to be used by DoD program
managers as guidelines in the development of these plans. The links
shown below show the memorandum and the Templates prepared under these
taskings.
CAIV is applicable to all programs and throughout all acquisition phases
including modifications and upgrades in the O&S phase. However, the
greatest single point of leverage for CAIV to affect program
requirements, TOC, schedule, and performance is at the beginning of a
program's life. CAIV means the user and requirements communities work
the requirements, cost, performance, and schedule tradeoffs first, using
a small number of Key Performance Parameters (KPPs), with the production
unit cost as a real, independent, input variable. These initial
estimates should be refined as the program progresses.
DAU Distance Learning Module on CAIV
The Defense Acquisition University recently completed development of a
distance learning module on CAIV. This module provides background
information on CAIV as well as related topics such as: the DoD 5000
series, stakeholders, TOC, incentives, tools, and risk management. The
CAIV module, and other distance learning courses, can be found at DAU's
Continuous Learning Center.
http://clc.dau.mil/kc/no_login/portal.asp?strRedirect=LC_CIA
Policy and Reference Materials
