Today after 10 weeks of full time instruction, the Defense Acquisition University West graduated the annual Advanced Program Manager Course (PMT 401) with a nice ceremony on the US Navy ASW Base in San Diego. I was one of three industry representatives in the class, which was primarily comprised of two dozen Air Force, Navy, and Army prospective and current program managers and deputy program managers. Without reservation I will assert this was the best course I've ever taken, because my fellow students were spectacular, and the professors have been trained to draw out interaction from the students on multiple levels.
See, DAU structured the course to have almost no lectures. We powered through 88 case studies, first by individual self study at night, then meeting at 7:30 in small group, followed by 9:00 class engagement. The class was divided into four groups of six students, each assigned to a group study room, where small group learning facilitated by a professor took place. We'd talk in small group for 90 minutes about the two or three cases we read the night before, then we'd argue the assignment questions while sharing relevant experiences from our different perspectives. All the cases were drawn from real world defense acquisition programs that presented a protagonist (the program manager) with one or more dilemmas. Once the four small groups met together in the large classroom, wider engagement ensued. The professors introduced critical thinking tools and other management methodologies that enabled us to settle on a problem statement, issues, options, selection criteria, and ultimately a course of action. Each of us was actively engaged in the learning experience, and we all learned from each other. Sometimes, DAU would have the actual program manager protagonist in a specific case talk to us about the case in greater detail, and we'd ask them questions and probe into their thought processes. It was a fantastic opportunity, and I will miss my classmates. That said, even though we just graduated this morning, more than one of my classmates has already reached out in order to build a group email so we can stay in touch. I'm gonna build a Blogger for us... pull vice push.
If you get a chance to attend DAU PMT 401, I highly recommend it. Some of my fellow small business associates have asked me how I could justify being away from work from 7:30 in the morning till 3;30 in the afternoon, Monday through Friday for ten straight weeks. In my humble opinion that's not the right question.
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Six years later... looking back on that PMT-401 course, I can't think of any event more influential to the sustained growth of Boarhog. Most of the business Boarhog does today can be directly traced back to my participation in that class, and those important relationships persist to this day. If you get the opportunity, don't pass it up.
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