Officials from Harris [HRS] are pushing the Pentagon to adopt software acquisition reforms within the next five years needed to move away from legacy procurement practices and accurately reflect industry’s transition to more rapid, iterative capability development.
Ross Niebergall, Harris’ vice president and chief technology officer, told
Defense Daily on Tuesday his company is expected to fully transition its software projects over the developmental operations (DevOps) model over the next three years and expects the Pentagon to include reforms in subsequent defense authorization bills to follow industry’s trend in this direction.
“One of the challenges that the DoD has is that software has traditionally been procured like hardware. They had a very strong hardware-mindset in how they developed the acquisitions,” Niebergall said. “What we have to focus on with DevOps is getting a minimum viable product into the hands of the user as quickly as possible, and then make sure that we have good and effective ways to iterate it as quickly as we can.”
Typical procurement timelines for large software intensive projects, like the Air Force’s GPS OCX and Air Operations Center projects, may run up to 12 years before users get a fully operational product, according to Niebergall.
“By that time, the needs have changed, the concept of operations have changed. Everything has changed,” Niebergall said.
The DevOps model, rather, focuses on agile software development where the minimally viable product is delivered for user feedback and then tweaked based on feedback and required patches.
Niebergall said he doesn’t expect sweeping reform across the entire DoD, but rather incremental movement across the services through specific programs, such as the Air Force’s recent Kessel Run program to rapidly deliver critical software upgrades (Defense Daily, Sept. 18).
“[The Air Force] is looking at creating a ubiquitous software factory. You can have potentially multiple vendors injecting software into it and going through this DevOps pipeline. That’s a massive paradigm change for the DoD,” Niebergall said.
The most recent defense authorization bill requires officials to take increasing advantage of DevOps in software-intensive projects and allows companies to write iterative software provisions in their proposals.
Niebergall said he expects future National Defense Authorization Acts to continue this push as industry looks for the Pentagon to start procuring software like the commercial world pursues the same products.
“My dream is that our defense products get to the point where they behave like our commercial products,” Niebergall said. “That’s going to require a massive change in mindset, a massive change in how we think about how we deliver new capabilities to the field, and what testing looks like.”
Industry will also have to adapt to this transition, including adjusting “earned value” models to account for a new DevOps-focused approach, which Niebergall added had support from the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) and Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).
“I’m optimistic that this is going to be the future of our industry. And I think it will happen within five years,” Niebergall told Defense Daily.