Conflict among team members predictably emerged in a successful US Department of Defense project when leadership inserted agile software development methodologies into the well‐established systems engineering‐oriented work environment. Yet, despite the conflict, project leadership saw inherent value in both agile development and systems engineering methodologies. So, instead of choosing one methodology over the other, project leadership took action to structure an approach that mitigated the conflict and enabled the project stakeholders to enjoy the benefits each methodology provided. This paper describes the project team's problem space analysis, the analysis results, and the balanced approach they developed with the goal of advancing the project to the next level.
This case study details the options evaluated and path chosen by a United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD) software development organization to re‐engineer four existing products with common features into a single product‐line resulting in product sponsors taking advantage of cost savings, developers shortening implementation and testing timeframes, and users obtaining product features faster while sharing a common experience across product variants. Although the software‐intensive products were originally a product line operating from a common code repository, they diverged due to different product sponsors having differing priorities and schedule commitments. The mission scope of each variant differs leading to a commonality range of approximately 20% to 70% based on the quantity of common features. The re‐engineering options evaluated included merging common code and maintaining it in a single repository; re‐using software code while keeping it in separate repositories for each product variant; and pursuing a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) to create common modules for insertion, updating, and replacement within any product variant without disrupting the rest of that product. With product sponsor support, the DoD project decided to pursue a hybrid approach of immediate code re‐use complemented with an agile approach to MOSA implementation. This solution allowed the project to re‐engineer the four existing product variants while still meeting sponsor, DoD, and end‐user operational needs.
Abstract-Defense Computer Systems developed and maintained over the years has resulted in thousands of disparate, compartmented, focused, and mission driven systems that are utilized daily for deliberate and crisis mission planning activities. The defense acquisition community is responsible for the development and sustainment of these systems over the course of its systems engineering lifecycle from conception, utilization, and eventually the decommissioning of these systems. While missions are being planned, and satisfied by existing computer systems, there are new missions being proposed which cannot be satisfied by a single existing computer system capability. Therefore, this raises the question whether a Networked Computer System (NCS) using combinations of existing and developmental computer systems is preferred in order to satisfy new capability requirements. This paper explores an approach in identifying a preferred NCS solution and determining the effectiveness in satisfying a mission.
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