ISBN: 1977406416 9781977406415

Category: Education / Curricula

Page count: 120

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has experienced persistent challenges with software development across various acquisition programs. Attempts to address those challenges through workforce initiatives (such as hiring, training, and professional development) have been severely hampered by an inability to identify and characterize the presumably tens of thousands of software professionals working within DoD's programs. In this report, the authors attempt to identify and characterize DoD's software workforce, the types of software developed within DoD, and the variety of methods DoD programs use when employing that workforce to develop software. The research team's effort to develop a comprehensive picture of the software workforce was hindered by a lack of data in existing DoD databases and by internal DoD organizational issues that limited the team's ability to gather data. Although this report provides a snapshot of DoD's software workforce, the types of software developed within DoD, and the variety of methods DoD programs use when employing that workforce to develop software, there are significant limitations in the underlying data. The research team's recommendations, using lessons learned from this effort, focus on what defense leaders will need to better understand, train, and employ DoD's software acquisition workforce in the future.