Applying the authority-activity model to the New Millennium Program's technology selection cycle

The New Millennium Program (NMP) has been validating new flight technology for eight years. Recently, a field study of how the NMP selected technology for flight validation was performed. One result of the study is that the NMP employed an authority-activity model in making its selections. This explanatory model showed how the NMP blended three different levels of authority power (organizational, project, technical) with three different primary activities (design, sensemaking, negotiation) to perform their process. In this report, we present the authority-activity model in detail. Then, we apply the model to four different stages of the selection process to illustrate how it 1) explains and captures the processes undertaken in these stages and 2) detects possible deficiencies in the execution or outcomes of these processes that demand attention. We assert that the authority-activity model is a useful analytic tool which can improve the selection process of complex, widely diverse, highly competitive systems.