DoD's Software Sustainment Ecosystem: Needed Skill Sets and Gap Analysis

Abstract

A key takeaway message is that software sustainment is an engineering task. Almost any non-trivial change to the software requires analyzing the change and the current system, tracing the impact of the change on the existing requirements and design, and developing a new solution. For these reasons and others, policies and practices that are based on hardware sustainment, which can be treated as a discrete series of activities intended to restore form, fit, and function, do not apply well to software nor to understanding the requirements for the software workforce. Executing the DoD software engineering sustainment mission demands a keen focus on defining and continually refreshing the DoD's software-engineering competencies to drive workforce development and organization performance. In this paper, we highlighted an initial functional model for thinking about software engineering competencies. We recognize that defining these competencies is a complex task that is a continuous activity that must be aligned with the nature and pace of technology change. Defining these competencies nests within the total workforce acquisition, development, and management strategy and plan.