Aerospace companies wary of digital design revolution. “With a flattening budget topline (at best) and many competing Air Force investment priorities, it’s not at all clear that this program will continue. We might just be left with a museum-ready prototype,” Teal Group’s Richard Aboulafia says… So far, he argues, there is little to suggest that the use of digital design and engineering practices can shift the 10-year, $10-20 billion development cycle from prototype to service.
How the Clinger Cohen Act can accelerate your digital transformation. “By 2002, 46% of the software systems developed across $37 billion worth of DoD spending failed to meet real needs, even though they met written contractual specification.”
Barriers to Entry Rondtable Discussion. “… perhaps no other system has demonstrated such complex and persistent barriers as the US Defense Acquisition system. ” Featuring Ben McMartin, Bill Greenwalt, Andrew Bowne, Samantha Clark, and Raj Sharma. Sign up here.
It’s time to modernize Department of Defense resourcing. “Despite a required avalanche of budget justification documents and hundreds of reporting requirements each year, transparency concerns remain.”
Gotta go fast: How America’s Space Development Agency is shaking up acquisitions. Good longer form piece. “In other words: In less time than it traditionally took the Air Force to design and launch one satellite, SDA wanted to launch 1,000.”
Airlines, Boeing surge on upbeat coronavirus news. “jumped by double-digit percentages after news of positive results in preventing Covid-19 in a closely watched vaccine trial.”
The US Navy’s Manhattan Project has its leader. Project Overmatch. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday tasked Rear Adm. Douglas Small to lead an effort that will “develop networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools, and analytics that support the operational and developmental environment that will enable our sustained maritime dominance.”
Eric, has anyone reached out to the program management offices and found out what value CCA is to them? We should consider repealing it see recommendation below
https://discover.dtic.mil/wp-content/uploads/809-Panel-2019/Volume3/Recommendation_44.pdf
Good question! But I think Matt has a nice way of framing CCA in such a way that the devsecops approach actually fits in it pretty well. Part of me debates whether it is existing rules/regs that holds the acquisition system back, or whether it’s not just a cultural mindset/execution.
I guess at some point you start talking about the same thing. But another interpretation of that is whether you need a top-down or a bottom-up approach to change. I perhaps favor a “top-down” through change in rules/regulations (most specifically, the PPBE) because those provide the framework for the more effective bottom-up stuff. Shortly, if the DoD made a mistake going with McNamara’s budgeting system, it should walk that back and then make incremental change to the “main line.”
So, I’m rambling here to self-rationalize why I would approach a top-down reform of PPBE and not work work within PPBE. I think that calculus could change depending on the rules/regs, like for CCA. It’s just that the PPBE is so meta to it all.