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Findings regarding the composition of DoD's software workforce from a snapshot of about 2,000 personnel

• Uniformed personnel, for the most part, do not identify as being part of the software workforce.
• The vast majority (about 80 percent) of DoD software personnel in the sample are in the engineering acquisition career field.
• About half of DoD's software personnel in the sample have a degree related to software or computer science; more than 90 percent have a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math.
• Most personnel with an educational background in software or computer science spend at least a portion of their time developing software. Less than 3 percent are employed exclusively in management roles.

Distinct challenges of DoD software

• Most DoD software directly supports the war fight—i.e., software contained in radios, sensors, and weapons, as well as in air, space, and land vehicles.
• Most DoD software is tightly integrated with underlying hardware.
• DoD software's security and safety challenges are far greater than for most commercial software development efforts.

Distinct challenges of DoD software organizations

• Many contributing factors make it difficult to hire software developers into DoD acquisition organizations.
• Once hired, there are substantial barriers to keeping software skill sets current.
• Software project, program, and contract management are key skill sets needed by DoD's software workforce as the department strives to manage a much larger contractor workforce.

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.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Snapshot of DoD Software Personnel

• Chapter Three

  Characterizing DoD Software Acquisitions

• Chapter Four

  Challenges Faced by Software Development Organizations Within DoD

• Chapter Five

  DoD Workforce Data Call Lessons Learned

• Chapter Six

  Summary and Recommendations

• Appendix A

  Data Collection Methodology

• Appendix B

  Workforce Data Analysis

• Appendix C

  Data Visualizations and Discussion of DoD Sample