aerospace Archives

Tag Archive for: aerospace

During a December panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, moderator Trish Regan of Fox News asks, “Who do you consider to be the biggest threat in terms of having the most cutting-edge technology for their military right now?”

Simple question, right?

However, instead of providing a predictable answer as to who, Raj Shah, the Managing Director of the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), takes the question as an opportunity to speak directly to a problem in the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Aerospace and Defense industries.

“Candidly, ourselves,” Shah says, “We don’t have an innovation problem in the Department… But what we do have is an incentives problem. We have built a set of structures and rules that does not encourage speed. You have processes where you won’t get fired for going slow, but you will get fired for making a small mistake.”

Before Regan can finish her follow-up question, Richard Spencer, Secretary of the U.S. Navy, jumps in: “I can’t stress that enough. Over the past 15 years or so, [we] have drifted away from risk management to risk amelioration, we’re trying to get risk out of the equation.”

The emphasis here is that you can, fundamentally, eliminate risk. Secretary Spencer says it himself: “I can get you to zero risk, [but] I can’t afford it.”

Importance of Speed and Efficiency

The balance in this equation is between risk, cost and speed, in achieving the desired outcome. In the current state of both the Department of Defense and Defense Industry, risk mitigation outweighs both speed and cost to the extent that every possible measure is taken to avoid the smallest of risks, no matter the cost or time commitment.

For both Spencer and Shah, this represents a threat… the biggest to the United States in fact! Secretary Spencer argues, “We have to get back to the game of managing risk… we have to be able to quantify the risk, manage the risk, in order to get the best effectiveness and efficiency out of what we’re doing.” While products and programs have grown in complexity and sophistication, development processes have in large part, remained static — leaving us in the current state-of-affairs where costs are high, efficiency is low and risk mitigation dominates.

Rebalancing the Equation

One key to risk mitigation is properly managed requirements. For this process, many companies and agencies have been relying on Word and Excel documents or an old document-centric tool called DOORS.

Keeping with these tools, the only means to manage risk faster is to either A) throw money at it (i.e., more people) or B) accept a greater risk possibility (no thank you).

However, in moving away from documents or document-centric tools, you can unlock the third option: C) change the processes by which you manage risk to achieve the same level of risk mitigation, but do so more efficiently.

As an example, in leveraging Jama’s modern requirements and test management solution for AS91000 — an aerospace quality standard requiring complete traceability — Mercury Systems was able to achieve end-to-end traceability far more efficiently.

According to Mercury’s Director of Systems Engineering, Joe Plunkett, he’s surprised more aren’t taking advantage. “We’re working with a defense contractor on a multibillion-dollar project,” Plunkett says. “He was stunned that something that took him hours to do could be accomplished in a few seconds with Jama.”

The Stakes Are High, But Not Binding

There is no denying the importance of risk mitigation in the Defense industry. While change is often seen as a risk in and of itself, that does not mean technological advancements cannot, and have not, improved risk mitigation. It is no longer necessary to sacrifice speed for safety and the Department itself is calling upon us to make a change.

As Kelly Johnson of Lockheed’s Skunk Works famously said, “We are defined not by the technologies we create, but the process in which we create them.”

Are you?

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk…In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

– Mark Zuckerberg, CEO & Founder of Facebook

Although this is true of many of today’s greatest product innovations and the people behind them, when it comes to aerospace and avionics systems and product development, winning is rarely about taking a huge risk and having it pay-off. In fact, most of the time winning is about building a safe, reliable, working product. (Extra credit is given for products that come in on time, under budget, and exceed your customers’ expectations for usability and durability). Of course, to Mr. Zuckerberg’s well-established point, innovation typically demands some level of risk. The secret lies in taking on only an acceptable amount of risk relative to your design assurance levels.

At Jama Software, we know for certain that the more efficient the requirements management process and the more you can define and approve (reach consensus) requirements upfront, the higher your likelihood of coming in ahead of schedule and under budget – and mitigating those risks. In his new “DO-254 Costs Versus Benefits” whitepaper, Vance Hilderman points out the more assumptions that are minimized, the greater the consistency of requirements and their testability is assured, and iterations and rework due to faulty and missing requirements is greatly reduced. One of the leading causes of project failure is poor requirements management. The benefit of DO-254 is the rigor it adds to your requirements management process, thereby increasing your odds of success.

DO-254 can also help save you time by reducing the number of bugs found during testing. Vance states: “Since DO-254 mandates thorough and testable requirements along with design / implementation reviews, far fewer bugs will occur and the test / fix cycle should be expedited.” Voila! Not only will you have a better functioning product, but you will save time and money as a result of the process.

In our ongoing work with heavily regulated industries like Medical Device / Life Sciences, Aerospace, and Automotive, we often hear companies immediately associating cost with regulation. And although that is true, the benefits far outweigh the cost. One is that the most significant cost escalation across DO-254 DALs occurs between Level C and Level B – the cost for Level B is the same as for Level A. It is important to realize that the most expensive design iteration will be when you initially begin designing towards a standard. As you become more familiar with the regulations and rules, it will become easier, and you will also begin to be able to reuse requirements that are reviewed and approved to fit the standard. In complex, regulated environments an investment in DO-254 is not only strategic, but can maximize time to value and save from costly rework and technical debt.

To read Vance’s whitepaper where he goes in-depth on these ideas and concepts, please download the paper here.

And to learn more about how Jama can help you adhere to and provide traceable proof of adherence to these standards, please start a free 30 day trial today!

When I joined Jama as CEO earlier this year, I was excited to become part of a team that was passionate about our customers and solving their problems. The companies we get to work with are a major reason I wanted to join Jama to begin with — it’s an honor and a thrill to partner with them as they build products that will change their industries and the economy. I know I’m not alone in that enthusiasm: As I met individually with every employee during my first three months on the job, over and over again “our customers” was a top reason people cited for coming to work here.

Our customers span an array of critical industries — aerospace, financial and consulting services, medical devices, government, semiconductor, consumer electronics and automotive, to name a few. I’ve now had the privilege of meeting with dozens of them, and I’ve consistently heard them describe the following market forces in play:

The new generation of smart, connected products is increasing competition.

For the first time ever, when consumers buy something new, whether a phone, a thermostat or a car, they expect its capabilities to improve over time. They expect new features over the lifetime of the product, automatic fixes where there were previously recalls, and unprecedented options for customization. With each release of Jama, we’re rolling out new features and improvements that focus on enabling innovation for our customers. We invested in building our REST API to add more even customization and extend the functionality of our solution.

Increasing complexity and new regulation add new challenges.

Development cycles are more complicated than before, requiring close coordination of hardware and software teams, often using different tools and methodologies. Connected products introduce new security risks, often into industries that were previously immune to regulatory compliance. As software becomes an increasingly critical component of new cars, the automotive industry has responded with new compliance regulations such as ISO26262, and so have we. This year we achieved ISO 26262 fit-for-purpose certification by TÜV SÜD to give our customers confidence as they navigate the path to compliance in their product development process.

Systems development teams require a purpose-built product development platform and must take a continuous engineering approach to create products for the modern world.

ALM was built for software, PLM was built for hardware, but today’s product teams require a unified set of capabilities. Teams need contextual, ongoing collaboration and a single source of truth for their data and requirements. In June, we released Jama 8, kicking off a series of releases that will build on our core traceability and collaboration features. We’re also investing in our product ecosystem with the launch of our Partner Alliance Program, working with best-of-breed solution providers to better serve our customers.

At face value, these challenges are daunting. But we get to see our customers overcome them each day through disciplined, modern management of their development processes, which lets them better capitalize on industry trends. As they work to deliver the life- and economy-critical products that are going to change the way we live, we’re glad to be their partners and are eager to foster their success every step of the way.