HOW (NOT) TO CONTRACT SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
I
n February 2021, the Army Cyber Institute (ACI) at West Point requested the contracting officer at the U.S. Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command to pursue a termination for default on a contract to develop “novel
challenges” for All-Army CyberStakes (AACS)—an annual cybersecurity competition. Because of the short timeline and COVID-related budget reductions, the termination meant there would be no competition that year. Although at first glance this is a contracting failure, we argue that aside from a risky time- line, the process worked mostly as it should (the Army did not pay for an unacceptable product). From this perspective, we offer our lessons learned on how to successfully pursue software devel- opment contracts in the future.
THE ALL-ARMY CYBERSTAKES CONTRACT Hosting a cybersecurity competition of the size, duration and caliber of AACS is a significant undertaking. While the ACI has resident technical expertise, it does not have the depth of experience or personnel to produce the necessary content—50 self-contained, cybersecurity puzzles across six subject areas rang- ing in difficulty from tutorial-like to solvable by only the most capable of cyber experts. In contrast to other cyber-related train- ing contracts, the content is the only part of the contract, and all material becomes the property of the ACI. Te ACI then manages the IT infrastructure and underlying platform for the competi- tion and serves the content using internal resources.
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT BEST PRACTICES Te Army continues to emphasize the importance of programs adopting industry best practices for software development. DODI 5000.87, “Operation of the Software Acquisition Path- way,” directed that “programs will require” software teams to use software best practices, such as Agile or Lean development meth- ods. Te instruction also cleared DOD programs in the software acquisition pathway from following the legacy Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System’s requirement-generation process to become less rigid and accelerate software development. Te paradigm shifts in software acquisition approaches high- light the importance of Agile and iterative software development;
however, as the ACI experienced, the standard Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) contracting process remains a serial process that encourages legacy software development methods.
SETTING THE STAGE FOR SUCCESS Two of the most critical phases for a software effort are acquisition planning and contract administration. Accurate cost estimates, iterative deliveries, logical contract structure and detailed data rights are inherent to a successful acquisition plan. Te govern- ment technical experts play a vital role in evaluating a vendor’s proposal, deliveries and communicating issues during the contract administration phase. Te following ACI lessons learned may assist acquisition professionals in managing the cost, schedule and performance of future software efforts.
Acquisition Planning: Te standard FAR-type contracts require deliberate planning up front, which is somewhat counter to the iterative approach neces- sary for software development. Tere are five lessons learned when planning for software design, development and testing.
Break the independent government cost estimate (IGCE) into components as much as possible. An IGCE for a software devel- opment effort with varying degrees of complexity should estimate the amount of time and effort necessary to complete each soft- ware item, which is known as “work-based costing.” In ACI’s case, the cost estimate should have focused on each software challenge instead of a blanket cost estimate for a software team develop- ing for a block of time known as “level of effort costing.” Te approach assists in the comparison of our assumptions about cost with submitted proposals.
• Require the vendor to deliver early and deliver often. Te high frequency allows for more objective monitoring of progress and product quality, and the iterative approach will prevent significant rework before final delivery.
• Sequence each capability or feature as a separate contract line-item number (CLIN) in the contract (with
Software contracts must be written for failure because the software will ‘break’ and have issues.
98 Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2023
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