THE SOFTWARE ADVANTAGE
WHAT IS MODERN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT?
Modern software development is an iterative approach to managing software development projects that focuses on continuous releases and customer feedback. Modern methodologies include continuous integration/continuous delivery, agile, lean and DevSecOps (develop- ment, security and operations) practices. The underlying principles of modern software development can be explained by three key pillars:
• Iterative development: A cyclic approach to development, where stages of the development cycle (requirements, design, develop- ment, implementation, testing and deployment) are frequently revisited to refine and improve the software.
• User-centered design: Developers and users work in collabora- tion throughout the development cycle to inject user feedback in real time and ensure the software consistently addresses the evolving needs of the user.
• Continuous improvement: Given the iterative nature of the devel- opment, the software is continuously refined and improved, resulting in enhanced capabilities. In an agile environment, soft- ware is never done.
only functional but also aligned with capa- bility gaps and user needs. (See sidebar, “What is Modern Software Develop- ment?”) Tese approaches are broadly adopted by the private sector and have been widely recognized as best practices in the field of software development since the early 2000s.
In contrast to the private sector, software development in the Army has tradition- ally used the waterfall approach, which is linear and sequential, requiring that each phase—from requirements development to deployment—be completed before the next can begin. Tis often means that changes are costly, time-intensive and hard to implement once development starts. Te Army’s use of the waterfall approach is, in part, driven by the Army’s underlying, institutional processes, which were put in place in the Cold War era and were designed for the development of the hardware-based capabilities that were so critical at the time. As a result, software has historically been acquired, developed and managed much like hardware.
CASE FOR CHANGE
• Army Directive 2024-02 represents the first effort across DOD to comprehensively adjust institutional processes in line with private sector best practices related to software development and acquisition.
• The policy includes 12 reform initiatives, targeting the full range of institutional processes, including requirements, acquisition, contracting, test and evaluation, cybersecurity, cost estimation, sustainment and data governance.
• The policy will not only address software development conducted by the program executive offices, but also the software devel- opment executed outside of the formal acquisition process by Army commands and other organizations.
• Several of the initiatives are specifically focused on developing the talent and expertise needed to execute modern software development and avoid common pitfalls.
Let’s look at an example of the process our software-intensive systems are subject to under this waterfall approach. At the earliest phase, requirements must be documented and approved. Currently, requirements are written in a very detailed and prescriptive manner (often totaling hundreds of pages in length), can take a significant period of time to be approved and are not frequently reassessed based on user feedback. Tis can result in inflex- ible requirements that cannot easily be changed to respond to user needs. Next, these systems enter the acquisition process. Until the creation of the Soft- ware Acquisition Pathway in October 2020, software-intensive programs were forced to comply with an acquisition process designed for hardware systems, which did not support the flexibility and
64 Army AL&T Magazine Spring 2024
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