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The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

(steveblank.com)
287 points ridruejo | 3 comments | 11 Nov 25 14:34 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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stackskipton ◴[11 Nov 25 21:26 UTC] No.45893105[source]▶
As someone who has some familiarity with this process, just like safety regulations are written in blood, Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally.

Yes, we have swung too much towards the bureaucrats but I'm not sure throwing out everything is solution to the issue.

Move fast works great when it's B2B software and failures means stock price does not go up. It's not so great when brand new jet acts up and results in crashes.

Oh yea, F-35 was built with move fast, they rolled models off the production line quickly, so Lockheed could get more money, but it looks like whole "We will fix busted models later" might have been more expensive. Time will tell.

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potato3732842 ◴[12 Nov 25 02:21 UTC] No.45895700[source]▶
As everyone with functioning eyeballs and more memory than a goldfish who has hung around a large organization more than a year knows, you quickly run out of blood to write in and start writing in "well that could've been worse if the starts had aligned, let's write a rule about it".

I used to work for a defense contractor. My former coworkers are probably cheering right now.

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mmooss ◴[12 Nov 25 05:42 UTC] No.45896731[source]▶
The contractors cheer because there are fewer limitations on poor quality products, project management, and fraud.
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1. potato3732842 ◴[12 Nov 25 11:23 UTC] No.45898830[source]▶
I'm talking engineering teams supporting already fielded equipment.

They just "know things" like which basically free tweaks ought to be made as a result of knowledge gained from the assembly being in the field. They don't stand to gain from the product being crap. Most of the fixes are basically free BOM tweaks that don't really matter but provide incremental improvements/refinements if made and the cumulative nickels and dimes really do add up.

The paper pushers on both sides that will do many rounds in order to make that happen are the only people benefitting from the make-work here as does anyone who skims their existence off of the paper pushers.

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2. shadowpho ◴[12 Nov 25 17:13 UTC] No.45902734[source]▶
>Most of the fixes are basically free BOM tweaks that don't really matter

From my experience there are very few BOM tweaks that don’t need a whole lot of validation, there’s no free lunch here

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3. potato3732842 ◴[12 Nov 25 20:30 UTC] No.45906118[source]▶
I'm talking about changes on the order of hot vs cold weather optimized rubber dust boots.

Either works. One lasts longer. The "wrong" one was chosen originally because the default assumption at the time was Fulda and not Fallujah.