dapaterson said:
"Added resources" - read The Mythical Man Month on this software development strategy.
Great book, however Brooks' law is not as applicable in this case as one might think. Brooks focuses on projects that try to accelerate development by adding developers: that's not what occurred with the JSF.
As a rebuttal I'll cite Meneely, Rotella and Williams's (MRW) 2010 piece Does Adding Manpower Also Affect Quality? An Empirical, Longitudinal Analysis (ESEC/FSE 2011.)
The applicability of MRW's work is that their five year Cisco project case study is more akin to the JSF's situation. MRW's findings suggest that if you have long time horizons and add developers gradually, it actually improves outcomes significantly. The Program Office and LM didn't try to accelerate development which is what Brooks warns against. Rather they did the opposite; the program executive and LM extended the development time by 30 months. In addition they moved alot of the non-KPP capabilities out of the three blocks and reduced the number of releases, which further reduced the burden on the development program.
The second part was to "add resources," including developers and additional technical capacities. LM added 200 developers to the differing block teams. They also increased efficiency of the current developers by increasing the number of networked computers, and reorganized their overall structure. Combined, these efforts removed alot of the pressure on the program, which avoids the accelerated growth issues discussed by MRW. Other studies on long term programs (Audris Mockus Organizational Volatility and its Effects on Software Defects (FSE 2010)) suggest that "The influx of new members into the organization had no impact on software quality, possibly because the new developers are not assigned to important changes."
I would argue that can be correlated by the improvements in the program's software development processes. There are still delays and alot of challenges, but they have declined significantly over the past two years. The time span to fix defects has decreased from 180 days to 55, though the delays are still around three months. I also think that the effect of the new hires have not been fully felt yet.
dapaterson said:
Again, though, you seem to be trying to avoid agreeing: The F35, as currently exists, does not meet Canada's high level mandatory criteria.
And therefore, should be disqualified from NGFC consideration - just as the RCAF initially disqualified other aircraft.
Which aircraft were disqualified?
I'm not agreeing because your premise is somewhat of a strawman. The F-35 meets the mandatory high level criteria; it only needs to provide such a capability within the DND's timeframe. Saying it does not meet it now, would not actually be part of the high level mandatory criteria.
Furthermore by your premise, I can argue that none all but one of the aircraft Meet Canada's high level mandatory criteria. None of the others have the low observable component. Three of the aircraft do not have the promised capabilities as of yet (one of which does not exist anywhere but on paper).
