This article is a placeholder for content to be included in Transforming knowledge and vision into action. Themes that will be expanded on include:

• defining an architecture to compartmentalize and focus change, and catalyze a 'divide and conquer' strategy
• establishing a portfolio of work that captures and considers both short and long-term candidates for investments and strikes an appropriate balance between these alternatives
• actively managing Statements of Work with respect to affordability and value
• understanding games that are played on both sides of specifications and how to referee them
• how to resolve ambiguities in communications before they roar up as either out-of-control implementation efforts or overlooked details
• how to apply the right set of resources to the right tasks without unnecessary overhead and delay
• leveraging 'multiple eyeballs'
• how to perform planning and tracking to avoid buffering against contingencies at all levels
• how to manage risk as a proactive and fiscally responsible activity, rather than a creative way of producing a ready-made list of excuses
• how to use modeling and simulation to explore alternatives, priorities, and constraints

Other key ideas

• partitioning (divide and conquer), architectures, integration, interface management, counter-intuitive behavior, lifecycle management, operating from multiple reference frames, etc.
• Assess status and plan strategy from multiple frames of reference. Learn to deal with ambiguity. Manage risk. Hedge bets.
• Build a stable platform that can be relied upon.

Unprecedented challenges which must be addressed include:

• How to gather insights about your mission and utilize that understanding to establish actionable plans
• How to share information and exploit learning among team members in a timely fashion