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Lockheed Martin: A Formal Software Development Approach

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When it comes to internal projects, Lockheed Martin does not have a formal software development approach and typically uses the Waterfall method. Lockheed Martin does not have a track record of success with this approach. Internal projects are either plagued with development delays, reliability issues, or are deemed as irrelevant to the company as a whole. The project ends up being abandoned or cut due to funding.
The reason why this happens in many cases is because these projects are typically led by a select group of individuals across a only a handful of disciplines and do not take into account the full needs of each part of the business. For example, the former business unit, Information Systems and Global Solutions (the federal information …show more content…

Since the software was fully developed using the Waterfall method, the product was too expensive to be used by one portion of the corporation and was eventually abandoned.
That being said, I am recommending that corporate formally adopt the Agile method for internal software development. This methodology will address the needs of the corporation and offer the speed to produce a minimum viable product. All disciplines and business units involved with the project will be working in lockstep and need to have a software to test the viability of the method. The flexibility of this approach will also allow projects to evolve throughout the process.
However, Lockheed Martin’s culture is averse to risk and is reluctant to change its processes without some form of proof and example. It will require buy-in from multiple executive stakeholders and have a project in place to test the methodology itself, while benefitting the corporation at the same time. Therefore, I am recommending that a software is developed to simultaneously demonstrate the benefits of the Agile approach and benefit the corporation as a …show more content…

These costs are usually nuts, bolts, screws, common raw materials, ‘commercial-off-the-shelf’ software licenses and other non-specialized supplies. These costs are forecasted based upon on a long-term estimation and applied as a percentage burden to the total material costs of a given program or project. The issue lies where each business unit may be using the same parts and supplies but may be using different part numbers and also different suppliers. Additionally, the procurement of most of these supplies are bought on an ongoing basis without a defined

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