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Technical Reviews In Complex Development Programs, Robert M. Braunger

Dissertations

Technical reviews in major complex defense and space projects are high-stakes events that technically assess programs costing up to billions of dollars, probing the work of hundreds of engineers. These technical reviews evolved since the 1960s into an industry-standard systems engineering process. Prior research argues that technical reviews at the subsystem level are the most technically important---conflicting with other work positing that mission-level technical reviews critically contribute to failures of government programs. Reviews are important, but research on reviews is inconsistent, fragmented, and lacks supporting data. To understand the practice of technical reviews and the alignment between practice and literature, …