THE PROFESSIONALS BEHIND PROGRAM SUCCESS


incorporating user feedback and lessons learned from several Soldier-based user juries, as well as testing and evaluations at the NIEs. Validation by the Army’s customer—Soldiers—was of notable importance throughout the process, and their feedback was actively incorporated as JBC-P continued to evolve. Te result- ing capability, which was fielded to the first unit last year, includes a new user interface with intuitive features like touch-to-zoom maps,


drag-and-drop icons, chat rooms and drop down menus.


Even beyond testing, users will never be shy about providing assessments of our systems, and our attention to their detail will improve the usability of future sys- tems. Soldier feedback from theater and several NIEs on the Army’s tactical network infrastructure, WIN-T, led to reductions in the time and complexity of


system startup, from a sophisticated sys- tem with dozens of buttons and switches that took 12 minutes to power up, to a streamlined system with a single button that could power up in less than half that time.


PLAYING WELL TOGETHER Te Army conceived of the NIEs to put emerging technology into the hands of


Soldiers in an integrated environment to get feedback. Tis feedback, along with lessons learned, has allowed the Army to mature certain programs, restructure or terminate others, reallocate resources to other priorities and deliver on nonnet- work and nonmaterial solutions.


Providing the system developer with the user’s perspective can be more challeng- ing, especially with weapon systems. For business systems, it should be less com- plicated. One solution is to embed the software developer in the process itself, shadowing the process owner to under- stand the process, how it works and the exceptions to the rules that often hamper acceptance of an automated process.


For example, knowing the best contract vehicle can give the developer and user flexibility. While a firm fixed-price con- tract would be best to use if the system specifications are well-developed, a cost- plus contract may be used if some of the specifications are unknown. Tis is an avenue for “software services,” which could include in the scope having the developer learn about


the process and


how the user interacts with it, rather than automating based simply on interpreta- tion of written specifications.


TALKING IT THROUGH Article co-authors Thom Hawkins, left, and Matt Choinski work on communicating requirements for an upcoming project. (U.S. Army photo by Nancy Jones-Bonbrest, PEO C3T Public Affairs)


In many cases, the business processes themselves may simply be too immature to automate. In that case, the embedded


150


The gulf of expectation can be better bridged by exchanging the traditional roles of developer and user. The more we create opportunities to see a problem through the other’s perspective, the better our communication about requirements and expectations.


Army AL&T Magazine


January-March 2016


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