Dear Mr. Paige, The response Robert Firth provided is right on. You misinterpreted his message and took it as an insult. I did not get the impression he was trying to say the folks in DoD are idiots. We have some very smart people in the DoD. However, by in large, these people are poorly trained when it comes to acquiring software intensive and software dependent systems. Most DOD system acquisition managers do not have a sufficient understanding of software acquisition issues to effectively make common sense tradeoffs during the system/software acquisition/development process. Career progression favored the advancement of electrical engineers, penalizing those skilled in computer science/software engineering. Software professionals could not rise to system management as they were not allowed to supervise electrical engineers. This perhaps worked well in the 1960s and 1970s when the development of a system was primarily hardware based and "code developers" frequently were little more than high school educated. Unfortunately today our senior management must develop systems that are primarily software based requiring extensive software expertise. Many in our senior management don't have the education and training to make common sense tradeoffs regarding software issues. Ada is only one of the many software issues where our senior managers have made poor decisions. As career motivations for software professionals were poor and salaries in the commercial side increased, many educated software professionals left the DoD; today senior management typically has very limited software expertise within their organization to draw on. Software expertise available has little experience with systems engineering and little capability to make appropriate system tradeoffs. This is compounded by the fact that software and hardware technology has exploded in the last 20 years and even specialized software expertise is needed in about 20 different disciplines for each project. The result is that the DOD is not in the position of being a smart acquirer. Acquisition managers have little expertise to assess the tradeoffs presented by contractors and to determine which are in the best interest of the DoD and the taxpayer. The lack of interdisciplinary capabilities in the system acquisition process severely inhibits our ability to field effective software intensive and software dependent systems. This issue has no short term solution. The DOD needs to develop a career progression for software engineering/computer science placing it on at least an equal basis with the electrical engineering career progression. People with good software skills need to be promoted to provide credibility within their organizations. These acquisition organizations should be required to have members with a bachelors/masters degree in computer science/software engineering. System acquisition training should be required for software acquisition professionals. As a stopgap measure, software acquisition training is necessary for senior management. The most effective stopgap training is provided via conferences such as the Software Technology Conference (STC), the SEI Software Engineering Symposium, and the Tri-Ada conference. Attendance at management tracks at these conferences should be strongly encouraged. There may be some value to requiring all acquisition managers to attend the DAU Software Acquisition Management (SAM) courses 201 and 301. The attached strawman identifies one view of the training needs for a software acquisition professional. As can be clearly seen, the Ada issue is really only the tip of the iceberg. If our senior acquisition managers can not address the Ada issue adequately, consider the impact of the other software acquisition issues. Today our systems acquisition is performed by very intelligent people, but untrained in software acquisition. This is the basis for Robert Firth's remarks. Our situation is equivalent to needing a quadruple bypass and having your highly skilled dentist perform the operation. Yes, the dentist is very intelligent and highly trained, but not for the job at hand. There is no wonder we have problems with so many of our acquisitions. Respectively submitted, Currie Colket [log in to unmask] ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: Reason for Mr. Paige's Decision Unclear Author: "Paige; Emmett Jr.; ; OSD/C3I +" <[log in to unmask]> at smtp-gw Date: 3/14/97 3:38 PM THIS ONE IS INSULTING TO A LOT OF SMART,INTELLIGENT FOLKS IN DOD THAT HAVE AS MUCH EXPERIENCE AS THE EDITOR AND MOST OF THE ADDRESSES. IT STRESSES THAT THOSE WHO ARE IN DOD FOR WHATEVER REASON ARE IDIOTS WHO DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHAT WE NEED OR TO TEST WHAT WE BUY. I REJECT THAT NOTION FROM ANYONE. BEING IN ACADEMIA OR INDUSTRIA DOES NOT TRANSLATE TO BEING THE SMARTEST AND MOST KNOWLEDGEABLE FOLKS IN THE WORLD OR THIS COUNTRY. NOR THE STRONGEST OR MOST ABLE TO USE THEIR BRAINPOWER. IINCOMPETENCE HAS NO BARRIERS AND IT CROSSES INTO ALL CAMPS TO INCLUDE ACADEMIA AND INDUSTRY. AT LEAST GOVT AND INDUSTRY HAVE AVENUES AVAILABLE TO ELIMINATE THOSE INDIVIDUAL WHEN THEY ARE DISCOVERED. MY BETTER JUDGEMENT TOLD ME TO SIMPLY IGNORE AND NOT RESPOND TO YOUR COMMENTS BELOW PARAGRAPH ONE, BUT YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE INSULTING A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO ALSO PAY TAXES JUST AS YOU DO AND THERE IS NO REASON OR ANYTHING THAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO ATTACK THEM OR INFER THAT WE HAVE A GOVT WORKFORCE OF INCOMPETENTS. MAY GOD BLESS YOU ANYWAY. ---------- From: [log in to unmask] To: Paige, Emmett Jr., , OSD/C3I + Cc: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; Lee Schmidt; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Reason for Mr. Paige's Decision Unclear Date: Friday, March 14, 1997 1:03PM Folks As you probably recall, I've been unhappy with the "Ada Mandate" for many, many years. I'm also in the camp that says the customer should decide the WHAT, and the contractor should decide the HOW. If the customer wants reliability and maintainability, then if Ada is indeed the best means to effect these ends, Ada will be chosen. And if Ada is *not* the best means, it won't be chosen, which is exactly right. However, that said, the present situation finds me deeply distressed. For I believe that what is going to happen is that the DoD will abandon its insistence on the HOW, and replace it, not with an insistence on the WHAT, but rather with nothing. Will future software products delivered to the DoD be assessed for reliability, maintainability, and the other *essential* -ilitites? I rather think not. I see no evidence that the DoD has any competence in such assessments, nor much evidence it even realises it *needs* such competence, and very badly. Even if such products were assessed, would the assesment have teeth? Can we really visualise the DoD rejecting a software product that bears a billion dollars of sunk cost, merely because it doesn't work? Look at the track record. Even within the Ada world, how many cases can we all cite of DoD funded developments that continued to eat funding long after it was palpably obvious they would never work? Again, I fear that such projects will be deemed "too big to fail", "too critical to fail", "too visible to fail", and the assessment will be fudged to allow us to pretend that failure is success. If the Ada mandate is to be abandoned, it must be replaced with something *more* effective at ensuring the DoD receives software that has the attributes necessary to support its mission. In particular, the software acceptance criteria must be comprehensive, rigorous, *and enforced by an independent authority*. An authority with the power, and the clout, of, for instance, the range safety officer at a missile test station. Without at least this much, I fear we are indeed heading back into the quagmire. Yours Robert Firth