RECALIBRATING REQUIREMENTS
TIGHTENING THE CIRCLE Troy Takachi, right, discusses the features of the Kairos Rapidly Installable Robotic Applique Kit with members of the Board on Army Science and Technology at AWA 17.1. Improving collaboration with industry in future AWAs will yield a greater ability to provide interim solu- tions to AWFCs, one of the goals of the AWA concept. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Cashmere Jeffer- son, 7th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)
industry who are working with the Army on new capabilities.
One of those senior leaders, Maj. Gen. Robert M. “Bo” Dyess, ARCIC deputy director since July 2015 and previously director of force development in HQDA G-8, outlined key factors in this equa- tion, both internal and external: a heavy workload of requirements for the people in the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) who generate
them, and inadequate communication from government to industry about what it needs. Nor does government have any means to understand just what industry is capable of.
Building better requirements, a prerequisite to building better capabilities, is a multifaceted endeavor with a boatload of stakeholders. Engaging those stakeholders early in both processes—capabilities and requirements development—is a dramatic departure from business as usual.
Imagine buying a new car, but without being able to go online and do some research or drop by your local dealerships to take a look or a test drive. Instead, you have to document all of the capabilities the car must have—every single aspect of it, from the kinds of materials used in its construction to the sizes of all the nuts and bolts to the engineering specifica- tions of the motor (horsepower, how fast the vehicle can go and in what terrain and weather conditions) and the design of all of the electronics and the software that controls them, all without getting input from industry—car companies. Let’s say that it’s been 15 years since you bought a new car and your old car has a carbure- tor, only the most rudimentary computer system, plus a CD player and a cassette deck, and you’re not really aware of new developments in automotive technology. What you know is what you’ve got.
Now that you have documented all of these requirements, let’s say you had to put out the specifications for bid to all of the different car dealers you know of. In
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this scenario, you wouldn’t even be aware that you could get an all-electric car or that many new cars come with autono- mous braking if you follow the car in front of you too closely, or sensors to help keep you in your lane.
WELCOME TO MY PAIN For the uninitiated, capability require- ments are both descriptive and prescriptive, going into exhaustive and painstaking detail on why a system is needed and for what, what the system should do and how it should do that throughout its life cycle—and more. A requirements docu- ment, which may run to several hundred pages, is a living document, and every time some jot or tittle of the program changes, the program manager must update the requirements documentation with all of the potential ramifications of the changes. Requirements address every aspect of a program or system. Tey are not optional. In some respects, requirements are so thoroughgoing that it is almost as though a requirements developer must have a crys- tal ball.
Tere are good reasons why defense
acquisition programs, which can cost many billions of dollars, must have all of their requirements documented and updated. Te Army,
for example, does
Army AL&T Magazine
January-March 2017
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