Method
Purpose, Population, Data Collection,and Analysis
The purpose of this qualitative,descriptive single-case study was to explore strategies that senior U.S. Army commanders might use to reduce the JCIDS approval time for a specific military need acquisition category (ACAT). That category is ACAT III, which includes the most common individual service member’s military equipment. This category does not include high-cost major weapons systems (Gass, 2012). The primary research question was this: What are strategies senior U.S. Army commanders might use to reduce the JCIDS approval time for an ACAT III military need? There were two secondary research questions:
1: What are the functions within the JCIDS process that may be a constraint by adding time to the ACAT III approval process?
2:What are the strategies that may be used to address possible constraints by reducing the time of the ACAT III approval process?Data for this study came from U.S. Army historical documents and semistructured interviews of 30ACAT III requirement writers and senior U.S. Army commanders having expertise in JCIDS located at Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Eustis, Virginia; and MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.
An interview protocol guide was used to reduce bias and promote data reliability. Member checking technique was employed to increase the reliability of the data from the interviews. Miles, Huberman, and Saldana’s (2014) data analysis method was used to identify themes and possible strategies. This method includes transcribing interviews, collecting field notes, coding with keywords, counting frequencies of words, displaying data in an organized manner, data source triangulation to enhance data validity, and linking relevant data to form themes.
Specialized computer research software was employed to assist with the analysis of data from the interviews and field note sand to identify key themes. Those key themes and information found in the literature review were correlated and then viewed through the lens of the theory of constraints (TOC) to discover potential strategies
