Tailoring to the Acquisition Test and Evaluation Process: Learning from the Past, Looking To the Future

Abstract

In learning from the past, we see how the need to conserve resources caused the bomber T and E community, for example, to tailor the acquisition process to use combined testing concepts1. Combined Testing is where each T and E stakeholder shares test planning and execution opportunities to collect data rather than each stakeholder conducting independent events. We also learn that changing mission needs and an acknowledgement that more flexibility was needed to accommodate inevitable changes that impacted software-intensive systems, particularly those that were heavily reliant on Commercial-of the-shelf (COTS) and Non-developmental Items (NDI), resulted in the Command and Control (C2) mission area adopting Evolutionary Acquisition2 approaches. This adoption led them to adjust their programs Test Strategies3 by: (1) Putting in place an early test planning involvement process which required the key test stakeholdersoperational testers, developmental testers and the Programs Test Manager--to engage during the Acquisition Strategy formulation phase and(2) Guiding C2 programs to include Combined Testing approaches in their strategies with continued test involvement so that they could keep pace in shorter acquisition cycle activities. Looming on the horizon is the likelihood that agile adversaries and subsequent changing mission operations will demand even higher rates of change for our systems; and, current development and acquisition cycles will find it hard to keep up. Emerging is a system development construct called Composable Capability on Demand (CCOD) for which a set of flexible, reusable tools and access to information/data are provided to the user environment. Users, in turn, finish the system to match their mission need. Who then conducts the testing in this construct and what resources will need to be applied to undertake this testing? Who evaluates the results of the test?

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2009
Accession Number
AD1132222

Entities

People

  • Diane P. Hanf

Organizations

  • MITRE Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Best Practices
  • Command And Control
  • Command And Control Systems
  • Control Systems
  • Corporations
  • Department Of Defense
  • Developmental Tests
  • Engineering
  • Governments
  • Information Systems
  • Law
  • Life Cycles
  • Military Acquisition
  • Situational Awareness
  • Systems Engineering
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Software Engineering.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control