By Robert Nord,
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Research, Technology, & System Solutions

New acquisition guidelines from the Department of Defense (DoD) aimed at reducing system lifecycle time and effort is encouraging the adoption of Agile methods. There is a general lack, however, of practical guidance on how to employ Agile methods effectively for DoD acquisition programs. This blog posting describes our research on providing software and systems architects with a decision making framework for reducing integration risk with Agile methods, thereby reducing the time and resources needed for related work.

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By Bill Nichols,
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Software Engineering Process Management

In his book Drive, Daniel Pink writes that knowledge workers want autonomy, purpose, and mastery in their work. A big problem with any change in processes is getting the people who do the work to change how they work. Too often, people are told what to do instead of being given the information, autonomy, and authority to analyze and adopt the new methods for themselves.  This posting—the first in a two-part series—describes a case study that shows how Team Software Process (TSP) principles allowed developers at a large bank to address challenges, improve their productivity, and thrive in an agile environment.

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By Mike Phillips
Principal Researcher
Acquisition Support Program

In my preceding blog post, I promised to provide more examples highlighting the importance of software sustainment in the US Department of Defense (DoD). My focus is on certain configurations of weapons systems that are no longer in production for the United States Air Force, but are expected to remain a key component of our defense capability for decades to come, and thus software upgrade cycles need to refresh capabilities every 18 to 24 months. Throughout this series on efficient and effective software sustainment, I will highlight examples from each branch of the military. This second blog post describes effective sustainment engineering efforts in the Air Force, using examples from across the service’s Air Logistics Centers (ALCs).

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By Douglas C. Schmidt
Principal Researcher

As part of an ongoing effort to keep you informed about our latest work, I'd like to let you know about some recently published SEI technical reports and notes. These reports highlight the latest work of SEI technologists in embedded systems, risk management, risk-based measurement and analysis, early lifecycle cost estimation, and techniques for detecting data anomalies. This post includes a listing of each report, author(s), and links where the published reports can be accessed on the SEI website.

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By Bjorn Andersson,
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Research, Technology & System Solutions

Many DoD computing systems—particularly cyber-physical systems—are subject to stringent size, weight, and power requirements. The quantity of sensor readings and functionalities is also increasing, and their associated processing must fulfill real-time requirements. This situation motivates the need for computers with greater processing capacity. For example, to fulfill the requirements of nano-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), developers must choose a computer platform that offers significant processing capacity and use its processing resources to meet its needs for autonomous surveillance missions. This blog post discusses these issues and highlights our research that addresses them.

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