DoD ‘Agile’ Software Development Still Too Slow: GAO
Pentagon programs that claim they’re ‘agile’ rarely are, GAO data shows. But how well does a Silicon Valley software strategy translate to weapons programs?
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on June 12, 2020 at 2:35 PM
WASHNGTON: As the Pentagon struggles to catch up to Silicon Valley, top officials have loudly embraced the private-sector software development strategy known as “agile.†But in the GAO’s annual survey of 42 major weapons programs, while 22 claimed to be using agile methods, only six actually met the private-sector standard of delivering software updates to users every six weeks — at most.
While GAO didn’t publish this data for all programs, we were able to find it for 10 of them. Of those, just three programs – one of them since cancelled – met the six-month timeline. The other seven had update cycles ranging from three months to more than a year.
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/06/dod-agile-software-development-still-too-slow-gao/
