Scaling Faster: Force Multipliers in an Agile Enterprise
by Nick Setterberg and Rachel Hirshman
Disruptive Thinkers curates blog posts that promote a culture of innovation in the national security community, inspiring and connecting ideas that challenge the status quo. We welcome submissions that are in line with this mission. This post was originally published as a PDF on LinkedIn.
Enterprise Applications in the DoD
The traditional DoD approach to building software is long and drawn out. Rather than delivering incremental value to users over the course of time, software is only delivered to those users once all tasks have been completed.
A world where innovation is king and our adversaries are quickly out-pacing us requires the DoD to be proactive and willing to adapt.
Kessel Run is a leading example of the creative thinking and agility needed in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape. A newfound emphasis on enterprise solutions at Kessel Run should be taken as a model for the rest of the DoD in order to more efficiently and effectively modernize our military to compete with our adversaries.
Kessel Run has demonstrated scalable methods and processes for incepting and delivering software to the field.
Kessel Run has demonstrated scalable methods and processes for incepting and delivering software to the field that is directly tailored to the needs of end-users through user-centered design. The next wave of value that Kessel Run can deliver comes from an investment in an enterprise outlook to identify capabilities that have a broad-reaching impact.
There are numerous capabilities and tasks that are of high value to many segments of the Air Force, but in the current system the same problem is solved over and over again in silos. Instead, collaboration across the Air Force ecosystem with an emphasis on enterprise solutions means these problems can be tackled once and applied to all parties.
Common Functionality: A Force Multiplier
Kessel Run has seen success focusing on specialized capabilities that numerous applications can take advantage of. One common example is a design system.
A design system is a set of reusable components, informed by clear standards, that can be put together to build any number of applications. This system provides two primary benefits: 1) to create a common look and feel throughout an ecosystem of applications and 2) to provide frequently used components so developers can deliver faster.
Design systems act as force multipliers and are commonly built and delivered by a segment of the organization for the benefit of all. The organizational structure of Kessel Run’s non-traditional program office allows for this focus on delivering specialized capabilities.
In the old paradigm, applications were over-architected on the front end, meaning that the precise instructions were defined before any line of code was written. This model precludes the consideration of new learnings as the application develops. Potential integrations and collaboration between products and services rarely occur.
In the new paradigm, Kessel Run is given broad requirements with much latitude to flesh out the more specific requirements, allowing new learnings to be brought into the fold earlier and more frequently. Teams can then take advantage of overlapping needs. And, with organizational flexibility, Kessel Run can create product teams that consolidate solving common needs under one responsible party for the benefit of everyone.
Scout: A Case Study
Scout is one of those product teams tasked with accelerating the delivery of geospatial capabilities to warfighters.
Almost a year ago, Senior Airman Maxwell Lehmann, a product designer at Kessel Run, pitched to senior leadership a team dedicated to providing shared geospatial capabilities to product teams. He knew the value maps bring to warfighters and understood the user pain associated with map development.
With Maxwell’s initiative and senior leadership buy-in, the team was born.
Scout has demonstrated a scalable and repeatable pattern to extract common tasks from individual teams and provide that as a service to all teams. Employing user-centered design and agile software development, Scout interacts directly with the application teams to determine and iterate on capabilities valuable to many of the application teams and their users.
This approach reduces the resources needed to deliver combat capability to warfighters. The time it takes from inception of the idea to delivery to warfighters in the field is also expedited as the difficult task of map development is commonly deprioritized when weighed against other user and business priorities. It also means that rather than multiple teams working on similar tasks, one team can handle that task and make it available to all.
Instead of applications existing within their own silos, they are all easily able to benefit from common capabilities while greatly improving the workflow and experience for their individual user bases. Product teams like Scout fuel Kessel Run’s huge impact on thousands of warfighters by expeditiously providing these common capabilities that are then permeated throughout the organization.
The Impact of Force Multipliers
Extracting common capabilities like geospatial tools into their own teams has distinct advantages.
First, these teams help to standardize the experience for warfighters. Currently, warfighters rely heavily on numerous applications with different interfaces and user experiences in order to do their job. The introduction of teams like Scout helps to standardize and optimize this experience and make these warfighters more effective in making critical decisions.
Second, teams dedicated to the delivery of specific capabilities become experts in that area and make better decisions regarding performance and usability.
Lastly, Scout absorbs the complexity of geospatial development work for teams, helping to move work from a world of high value, high complexity to high value, low complexity. This new breed of product teams is opening up a world where the work of one team can nearly instantaneously be leveraged by numerous others, getting valuable features delivered to warfighters faster.
The new flavor of work burgeoning in Kessel Run that emphasizes enterprise solutions should serve as a model for the rest of the Air Force and the DoD. It is imperative that the DoD as a whole continues to invest in organic software development. This allows for the flexibility and cross-team collaboration needed to break down silos and deliver high value, force multiplying capabilities to warfighters.
Our ability to outpace our adversaries depends on it.
Nick Setterberg is the Lab Director at Kessel Run where he drives the culture for a 1,000+ organization. Prior to that, he was a designer on two product teams as well as an associate director helping multiple product teams with their path to production. Nick is an active duty Captain in the Air Force with operational experience and holds a Bachelor’s from Duke University.
Rachel Hirshman is a technical product manager at Kessel Run with previous experience working on cybersecurity policy with the Air Force and on military exercises at Indo-Pacific Command. She has a Bachelor’s and a Master’s from Stanford University where she was a research assistant at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the U.S. government.
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