This article was first published on LinkedIn on 1 December 2016.

What is the connection?

John Boyd

Colonel John Richard Boyd (January 23, 1927 – March 9, 1997) was a United States Air Forces Officer whose fascinating life is captured in the book: Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War Paperback – May 10, 2004 by Robert Coram.

Fighter Pilot Training and Aircraft Design

He was a fighter pilot who became a military academic developing numerous theories including papers on aerial combat. These papers form the basis of fighter pilot training around the world.

John Boyd’s Energy-Manoeuvrability theory or E-M theory of aerial combat became the foundation for modern jet fighter design.

OODA Loop

One of Boyd’s other significant works was the OODA loop. He developed a model of how we interact with our environment, breaking the process down into the follow four overlapping tasks:

• Observation: the collection of data using the senses (listen, observing, communicating)
• Orientation: the analysis and synthesis of the data to form one’s current mental perspective
• Decision: the determination of a course of action based on one’s current mental perspective
• Action: the physical playing-out of decisions

Observation

Okay, as John Boyd rightly theorised, we all subconsciously exhibit this feedback loop.

Excellent project management has at its core the OODA loop.

Neil

p.s. No this does not mean that all project managers are fighter pilots although I have seen a fair few go down in flames………….. 

p.p.s. This connection between John Boyd’s work and project management is not new. There is a wealth of information on the internet on this subject. Glen B. Alleman post The Origins of Scrum and Empirical Closed Loop Control is an interesting example.

References:

1. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War Paperback – May 10, 2004 by Robert Coram
2. OODA Loop Diagram By Patrick Edwin Moran (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
3. Artwork: Whaam by  Roy Lichtenstein – Tate Modern London