In Washington, knowing “who” is usually more important than knowing “what.” Roll Call magazine offers a valuable feature for industry and government personnel alike, as it covers “Defense: 10 Staffers to Know”:

“The world of defense encompasses a range of related issues, from procurement to personnel to weapons systems – and their respective price tags. This week, the Senate Armed Services Committee marks up its 2010 defense authorization act; last week, the House Armed Services Committee marked up its 2010 legislation. Here are 10 Hill staffers who play important roles in establishing the nation’s defense policy and priorities.”

The feature offers short descriptions of the staffers’ backgrounds, and some entries also note particular foci. Contrary to public perceptions, these staffers aren’t young 20 or 30 somethings; they’re generally people with decades of experience in the field.

Software heavy
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Software is a growing slice of military production budgets, and it isn’t always found in obvious places. On the ground, BAE Systems’ FMTV medium trucks seem prosaic, but a look under the hood reveals an astonishing level of software code in each vehicle. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, a big winner in the Pentagon’s FY 2010 budget recommendations, considers the aircraft’s code to be one of its most important – and most secret – aspects. In the Navy, a movement toward open electronic architectures is culminating in the DDG-1000 “destroyer” and its Total Ship Computing Environment – an area recently identified by the US GAO audit office as a significant program risk.

The commercial world is moving toward Agile Programming models, in part as a solution to its perennial problems with late and over-budget releases. For various reasons, that could prove to be a difficult transition in the defense industry.

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Former Microsoft and Corbis development manager David Anderson offers an intriguing way forward, using an approach that builds on key methods already in use within the defense industry: Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, Kanban, and Lean business. David’s results were impressive. His QCon 2009 presentation is enlightening, as he explains the systems used, his approach to implementation, and the results.

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Power Point presentations. They’re ubiquitously common, and often criticized for dumbing down discussion within industry and the military. There’s some truth to that assertion, in part because most people have never been trained to design and present that information properly. DID’s “Preparing More Powerful Presentations” offers useful examples, teachings, and tips that can help our readers sharpen an important career skill.

The defense industry is a very technical industry, however, which creates some unique requirements for good presentations. Penn State discusses technical writing and presentations’ requirements, and teaches an associated set of techniques called “the assertion-evidence structure.” It begins by changing each slide’s title to an assertion rather than a heading, and follows by changing the design and structure of the slides themselves. It meshes well with the many of the recommendations in “Preparing More Powerful Presentations”; together, these approaches can make a big difference to your presentation’s impact with its audience.

Good design
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Bernard M. “Barney” Oliver was HP’s director of research for 3 decades, from 1952 to 1981. His list of patents, engineering achievements, and science awards was bogglingly large, and included many of the most prestigious awards in these fields. He was also a stickler for the proper use of English; and for clear communication that could move people by answering the “why?” questions, even as it informed them by answering the “what and how?”. That talent was one of many things that set him apart from his peers.

His most lasting achievement is related to that talent. The 1971 Project Cyclops report [PDF format, 14.5 MB | Print version] laid out the basis for theories of intelligent life in the universe, and was instrumental in the creation of NASA’s famous SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project.

Time may tell us how many of SETI’s premises turn out to be true. Until those verdicts are rendered, Dr. Oliver’s work is offered as a fascinating read – and a gold standard for excellent written communication in the aerospace, engineering, and technical policy fields.

Plain English?

If you work in the defense industry, communication is part of your job. It’s necessary within project teams. It’s often the difference between success and failure, when you need to explain your job or your project to upper management. Its importance grows again when you need to explain your project or your work to friends, family, or the public at large. Testimony before a Congressional committee would certainly underscore the need for clear communication, in a very pointed fashion. Then again, most people don’t have their perceptions of the industry shaped by Congressional committees. It’s shaped by reports they read, which are based on industry web sites, releases, and interviews. It’s also shaped by people they know. People like you.

A funny and deeply instructive recent interview with the head of the Pentagon’s Business Transformation Agency drives this point home with crystal clarity. It’s an unusual example, in that the same person responsible for a classic example of impenetrable bureaucrateux, promptly rights his own ship and proceeds to give a clear answer when prodded to do so.

This makes it an outstanding educational example for industry members who wish to become more persuasive, and have more impact:

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Col. John Boyd

“In the mid to late fifties, a fighter pilot could earn himself a quick forty bucks and perhaps a nice steak dinner in Vegas – not to mention everlasting renown, which is to fighter pilots what oxygen is to us lesser beings – by meeting over the Green Spot at thirty thousand feet and taking position just 500 feet behind an arrogant and unpleasant man with precisely zero air-to-air victories to his credit. From that perfect kill position, you would yell “Fight’s on!” and if that sitting duck in front of you was not on your tail with you in his gunsight in forty seconds flat then you would win the money, the dinner and best of all, the fame…. To be challenged in such a manner is an irresistible red flag to men like this, and certainly no less of one because the challenger was a rude, loud, irreverent braggart who had never been victorious in actual air-to-air combat. And yet that forty dollars went uncollected, uncollected for many years against scores of the best fighter pilots in the world.

That is more than luck. That is more than skill. That is more than tactics.”

The most important American military figure of the 20th century will not be named Eisenhower, or Patton, or even Marshall. Instead, that title is likely to belong to a man who never made it past Colonel. Yet John Boyd is justly credited with inspiring America’s victory over Iraq in Desert Storm, 5 years after his death. He continues to inspire a number of prominent figures in America’s military reform community, and in April 2008 US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cited Boyd as an exemplar to officers in all services – someone who wanted to “accomplish something” more than he wanted to “be somebody” [Pentagon DefenseLINK | see video]. Who is this guy?

Worthwhile books have been written on that subject, but for a quicker set of takes, Bill Whittle (yes, Frank Whittle’s grandson) offers a compelling snapshot in “Pope John and the Supersonic Monastery.” Fast Company magazine’s “The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot” offers an accessible introduction from a business strategy standpoint. Readers can also get a flavor of the man himself by watching a short video excerpt of Boyd discussing doctrine, listening to audio of his “conceptual spiral” presentation [Quicktime], and reading transcripts. A copy of his “Patterns of Conflict” slides is also reproduced in Power Point, though people who know Boyd would be the first to tell you that his presentations went far beyond what was written on his slides – as good presentations ought.

Agile development
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Last week, DID’s “Sharpen Yourself” series discussed the Agile Software Development trend. This week’s installment discusses the issue of team member performance. The context involves a team member who will not perform within the team’s new Agile development approach – but the issue surfaces in many contexts within the workplace.

One manager in the UK offers some thoughts from his own experience. Our own experience disagrees somewhat, in that there is more than one way, and team pressure can be an effective approach when used properly. We’re also reminded of a friend’s experience, which prompted him to write “My Ft. Bragg MBA.” On the other hand, Kelly Waters’ provides a useful sequence and toolset that should form the core of a good manager’s response.

“I’ve managed software development teams for many years (in the UK) and am currently responsible for a web development group of about 90 people. I think I’ve experienced every HR/management procedure in the book and keep promising to write a book about some of the more extreme examples (that are entertaining stories in hindsight but certainly weren’t at the time!).

....In my experience there’s only one way to deal with someone behaving badly in an Agile Development team (in fact in any team):”

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Business 2.0, in its June 2007 article “The 50 Who Matter Now” about trends transforming business:

“It started as a rebellion against overwrought, Dilbert-style software development projects. Today the set of practices known as agile software development is reshaping the way coders and entrepreneurs create Web-based services. Agile teams work very quickly—sometimes in as little as a week—to create small chunks of code. Once a component is finished, additional features are added, with the process repeating indefinitely. Agile also has a reputation for enabling managers to deliver products on time and under budget, which helps explain why it has become a methodology of choice at companies like Google and Lockheed Martin.”

Well known business services firm Salesforce.com bet the entire company on this approach, and saw its number of major product releases per year shoot back up. Industry organizations like the Agile Alliance have sprung up to serve firms converting to this approach, other military contractors beyond Lockheed Martin are using this system, and Agile development has become a hot topic in places like the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. Some valley managers have even reported returning from vacation, to find that their teams had switched from traditional development approaches to this methodology.

“Scrum” is an organizational approach and set of processes that is frequently used as part of Agile software development. Hopefully, you haven’t had your team convert on you during a vacation – but if you did, this 1-page Scrum cheat sheet would help you get oriented quickly. See also this page from US Army/DHS contractor Envisage, which outlines a number of elements and practices associated with Agile Software Development.

Government contracting is a difficult field for businesses to enter. This is especially true if they lack the prior experience that can help them find and filter potential contracts, understand the cycle times and effort involved, secure the cash flow required as table stakes, and bid successfully. Within that arena of public sector contracting, defense is its own field, with its own characteristics and sets of relationships.

These obstacles have traditionally made it difficult for small and medium sized businesses that focus on the civilian sector to become involved in defense contracts. This is so despite federal targets for small business contracts, programs for service-disabled veterans, and other inducements. Those programs create opportunities, but don’t offer the services that help businesses bridge the gap.

The US Defense Logistics Agency’s Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) program relies on matching state funds, but states who invest in it can create a useful resource that helps bridge the gap in their states. One state that has invested in PTAC is Utah, under Gov. John Huntsman…

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The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) took an unprecedented step on May 15, 2007, blocking troop access to MySpace, YouTube, and other popular Web sites. The official reason was to conserve bandwidth and safeguard security. But the DOD’s ban also highlighted a gap in understanding between senior military leaders and what demographers call Generation Y (alternatively known as the millennial generation or the baby-boom echo). Few members of this generation, born after 1978, can recall a time when the Internet was not at their disposal.

Not long ago, one of the authors of this article was asked to lead a U.S. Air Force study on the implications for the military of this new online generation. The request came from senior officers who had been appalled to discover a number of junior officers using the still-permissible Facebook Web site for the purpose of organizing their squadrons. These senior officers were having difficulty with the concept of using a civilian social-networking site for military purposes. What would that mean for military security? How would it affect the control and vulnerability of squadrons in the field? And from the perspective of DOD “middle management,” what was a major supposed to do? Forbid the behavior and risk losing the real benefits of an online community? Or protect it and risk the wrath of more senior officers who just didn’t understand?

This kind of conundrum is relevant not just for the U.S. military. A wide range of organizations, including most global corporations, will soon face a large, new cohort of young employees. Generation Y’s affinity for the interconnected world is just one of its intriguing characteristics….

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