[b_davis_]

i find it very 'rich' that a crowd that would never accept firm fixed price work (we do 'agile', it has to be flexible .. we need time to explore options ...) is so down on cost plus.

'cost plus' is not infinite money. there is a budget, performance is evaluated every quarter. every increase is reviewed. the additional money has to be appropriated.

firm fixed price is how the government buys low risk. For lack of a better analogy, a waterfall development. Requirements are clear, the technology is well known. From the beginning.

cost plus is how the government buys systems that have never been made before.

[dylan604]

> Requirements are clear, the technology is well known. From the beginning.

Is that really a true statement, even for Starliner? The US Gov't is infamous for changing plans/designs well into the process for many items which is the key reason for cost overruns and blown deadlines. I didn't follow Starliner's development process at all, but I would be shocked if from the beginning the requirements didn't change.

[b_davis_]

that mismatch between risk / requirements and the type of contract is the root of this whole problem.

if it was cost plus, the government would have had an incentive to no push for changes, since they would have been paying for it.

and yes, Boeing should have said no. but, politics.

[jjk166]

Requirement changes on cost plus contracts are endemic. And it's not one way - typically the pipeline is starting to work on the project with requirement A under the assumption it will cost X, find out a decent way through that it's going to cost way more than X, then change to requirements B under the assumption it will only cost Y, repeat two or three times.