Software Architecture in the Military

Software architecture in the military? That gives a whole new meaning to Thomas Mowbray and Raphael Malveau's book Software Architect Bootcamp.

But in this case, we're talking about a technical report entitled Progress Toward an Organic Software Architecture Capability in the U.S. Army, by Stephen Blanchette Jr. and John Bergey, senior members of the Software Engineering Institute's technical staff at Carngie Mellon University.

As it turns out, the goal of the U.S. Army Strategic Software Improvement Program (ASSIP) is to improve the acquisition of software-intensive systems. One of the initiatives undertaken by the program is to begin building a level of technical expertise in modern software architecture practices within the Army acquisition community. This report (Technical Report CMU/SEI-2007-TR-010) describes the Software Architecture Initiative of the ASSIP.

One ASSIP initiative focuses on software architecture. Sound software architecture practices are a strong success factor in SIS programs. However, initial investigations into Army software-intensive systems (SIS) acquisition indicated that while software architecture practices were deemed important, methods and skills to carry out those practices were perceived to be inadequate. In response, the ASSIP formulated an initiative to build an organic software architecture capability within the Army acquisition community.

Blanchette and Bergey's report describes the work done to lay the foundation for an organic Army software architecture capability. That includes training Army professionals in software architecture practices and conducting software architecture evaluations. This report provides an accounting of the results and lessons learned from the initiative and related work, and enables the launch of similar approaches in the broader acquisition community. So far, 64 Army technical personnel have received software architecture training through the ASSIP software architect initiative.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 01:29 PM  Permalink