Software factories are fast becoming a priority investment for the Department of Defense (DoD). While the Air Force has pioneered the adoption of software factories with its 7 years of investment in Kessel Run, other DoD agencies are now catching up on their investment in software factories. In today’s news roundup, we look at how software factories are driving agility for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps and helping the DoD meet their complex and critical mission.
Here are our top three stories.
DoD CIO John Sherman Shares Software Modernization Implementation Plan
In April, DoD CIO John Sherman approved the agency’s Software Modernization Implementation Plan. The plan revealed that the agency is increasing its investment in software factories to “continuously deliver value by deploying software to meet the needs of a specific community…while enabling continuous rollout.”
This commitment to expand the use of software factories will ensure that the DoD has an agile and secure ecosystem to support operations, acquisition, and the delivery of other capabilities critical to today’s mission. Ready to learn more about the software modernization plan? You can do that here.
Nebula Software Factory in Quantico, Virginia, Delivers Agility and Fosters Innovation for the Department of Defense
While software factories are a driving force for agility and innovation for the Department of Defense, there are still relatively few available for agency leaders to experience the benefits firsthand.
That’s where the Nebula Software Factory in Quantico, Virginia comes in.
Nebula, a creation of the innovators at Chenega and the Cyber Bytes Foundation, is a fully functional software factory where DoD teams can create minimum viable products and proofs of concept free of charge using state of the art tools and technologies. As Mike Masten, Vice President of Modernization and Innovation Services at Chenega Systems shared in a conversation about the benefits of software factories: “Look what we can accomplish if we leverage the right tools and methods!”
To hear more from Masten about Nebula you can read an article or watch a video here.
Software Factories Deliver Value to both Classified and Unclassified Projects
You might think that software factories would have only limited value to the Department of Defense because so much of the mission involves top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI). However, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Deputy CIO, EP Matthew noted recently that unclassified level software factories drive direct benefits for TS/SCI or classified level app development.
Most obviously, software factories bake security in using a DevSecOps approach, but more than that, as Mathew noted, “[w]henyou create a software factory at the unclassified level, you don’t need to get software developers that are top secret/sensitive compartmented information cleared.” With more developers available to work on the project, the project can be completed more quickly. And “[b]y having the software at the unclassified level, DIA can easily move the application to the classified side, as weel as the data instead of having to build two separate applications and adding complexity to how they manage the data.”
You can keep reading here.
