Challenges of Adopting DevOps for Combat Systems Development Environment

• Published in: Defense AR journal Vol. 29; no. 99; pp. 22 - 48
• Main Authors: Miller, Andrew, Giachetti, Ronald, Van Bossuyt, Douglas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fort Belvoir Defense Acquisition University Press 01.01.2022; Superintendent of Documents
• Subjects: Anniversaries; Armed forces; Best practice; Change management; Defense industry; Embedded systems; Federal agencies; Interviews; Literature reviews; Military research; Organizational aspects; Qualitative research; Research methodology; Software development; Software industry; Software services; Software upgrading; Systems development; Work environment; United States; United States > US; Silicon Valley-California
• ISSN: 2156-8391; 1553-6408; 2156-8405
• DOI: 10.22594/dau.21-870.29.01

The Department of Defense (DoD) is often exhorted to adopt best practices from industry, and more recently, innovation in software development as exemplified by Silicon Valley. Yet, the DoD is vastly different from industry in multiple aspects, and adoption of such practices is not as straightforward as in industry. This article investigates the challenges of adopting Development and Operations (DevOps) in the U.S. Navy for combat systems. The authors conducted interviews of multiple subject matter experts in the Navy and DoD familiar with software development, DevOps, and the DoD’s acquisition processes. The observations collected from the interviews were organized and classified into either organizational, process, regulatory challenges, and technical challenges. The majority of the challenges cited were nontechnical challenges dealing with regulations, organization culture, and process. Knowledge of the challenges could help acquisition leaders in planning for, and adapting DevOps to, the Navy’s acquisition process to improve DoD’s software development and maintenance processes.