Some acquisition processes are simple and others are simplistic. Project success requires knowing the difference. This presentation lays out a range from simple things (triangles) to complex things (theory of general relativity). We look at the human bias to oversimplify and its dangers. To illustrate these dangers, we examine the requirements and verification strategies of Agile development.

We claim that many complex problems require mixed acquisition methodologies that create heterogeneous solutions to heterogeneous problems. This implies that a project manager must know a range of tactics for major acquisition tasks and match an effective set of solution tactics to each facet of the problem. We illustrate this strategy by describing mixed requirements development (MRD). When a solution is created from multiple sources (COTS components and custom components), MRD matches the information needs of each source and creates multiple requirements specs, one for each source.