Articles

By Andrew Park | 2026-04-28 The Department’s AI investment is optimized for connected environments. The fight that matters most isn’t. The Department’s move to establish the Maven Smart System as a formal program of record is proof that AI-enabled operations have entered the acquisition mainstream.[24] What’s missing is an equal commitment to military-specific Small Language Models (SLMs) for the use cases where frontier LLMs dependent on persistent connectivity to remote co

By Andrew Park | 2026-02-09 Last Thursday, Nicholas Carlini at Google DeepMind published something that made even AI skeptics pause: a functioning C compiler, built almost entirely by coordinated AI agents. Not a demo. Not toy code. A real compiler (software that translates human-readable code into instructions a computer can execute) that could build real-world programs and pass serious test suites. When I first saw the headlines, I was genuinely amazed. Impressed. Surprised

By Andrew Park | 2026-01-21 How the Air Force Divested Its Weapons Innovation Capability Executive Summary The Air Force faces a persistent acquisition challenge: major programs routinely fail during the transition from development to operations, despite meeting technical specifications. This article documents the root cause: the 1992 elimination of a specialized career field that once owned integrated product risk across the full acquisition lifecycle. Without this capabilit

By Andrew Park | 2025-11-17 This article is a follow up to "The New Acquisition Landscape: Implications for the Defense Industrial Base" [1]. For nearly two decades, DoD has pushed the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA), which is a strategy for designing weapon systems with interchangeable parts and open interfaces. Every major prime contractor framed itself as MOSA compliant. Lockheed Martin highlighted modularity across its naval, air, and missile portfolios. Northrop Gru

By Andrew Park | 2025-11-11 Why Defense Acquisition Reform will create the biggest demand for Product Managers since the tech boom The Department of Defense (DoD) just announced the biggest change to how it buys weapons since World War II. If you work for a defense contractor or you’re a Product Manager thinking about joining the defense industry, everything is about to change. The Pentagon is prioritizing speed over compliance, and they’ll need an army of Product Managers to

By Andrew Park | 2025-11-11 On November 7, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth eliminated the institutional machinery that enforced Waterfall development in defense acquisition and mandated Agile + DevSecOps for all software. For software engineers studying the history of their profession, this is the day the last major Waterfall stronghold finally fell. What Just Happened: A Historic Moment On November 7, 2025, the Department of Defense (DoD) released two documents that

By Andrew Park | 2025-10-26 Executive Summary The Project Management Institute's PMBOK Guide 7th Edition (2021) represents a fundamental paradigm shift in how software project management is conceptualized and practiced. This isn't a minor update. PMI has reconceptualized project management to integrate product thinking throughout the standard, moving from a 34 year old process based approach to a principles based, value delivery framework. This shift is most pronounced for so

By Andrew Park | 2025-10-16 The F-35 Joint Program Office adopted Agile-based methods in 2018 and DevSecOps practices shortly thereafter, while Lockheed Martin began implementing Scaled Agile Framework in 2013 and stood up its Software Factory with DevSecOps methodology [Fli20, Dov18, Loc25]. Over a decade of methodology adoption later, the results tell a damning story. In January 2025, the Pentagon's test office reported the F-35 program "has shown no improvement in meeting

By Andrew Park | 2025-10-14 How to Leverage No Code Tools, RPA, and AI Agents Effectively Across the Department of Defense, automation is becoming an operational necessity. Whether the goal is reducing manual workload, increasing mission readiness, or modernizing outdated workflows, the question is not whether to automate — it is how. There are three major categories of automation tools in use today. Each is suited to a different type of work. Choosing the right category up

By Andrew Park | 2025-08-19 Vendor lock-in has sunk some programs and made others heroes. What separates the two? Throughout my career working with defense programs, I've observed these same dynamics play out across different vendors and contracts. The F-35 program perfectly illustrates how this cycle begins. In the early 2000s, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was awarded to Lockheed Martin with a contract structure that gave the prime contractor extensive control over the airc

By Andrew Park | 2025-08-07 Throughout my career, I’ve had conversations with many Engineering VPs and CTOs who’ve shared a common frustration: “Our developers have never been great at documentation, and it’s leads to a lot of technical debt problems.” But there’s a new twist now. Over the last year I’ve heard some of these same leaders placing hope in AI tools to solve this once and for all. This is a seductive belief, and it’s also one of the most dangerous myths in modern

By Andrew Park | 2025-08-01 How the Buyer-User Disconnect and Weak Product Management Put Mission Success at Risk Throughout my career, I’ve heard countless DoD operators say the same thing about their software systems: they’re slow, hard to use, unreliable in the field, and rarely match how the mission is actually executed. These recurring problems stem from deep flaws in how DoD software is acquired, funded, and managed, starting with the fact that the people buying the sof

By Andrew Park | 2025-05-29 Lack of Human Codebase Understanding Poor Architecture & Design Lack of Product Knowledge Lack of Good Documentation Bias Toward Code Previously Trained-On Poor Understanding of Debugging Inability to Handle Innovative Data Transformations Conclusion AI can rapidly generate tons of code—but is that code technical debt or technical wealth? Technical debt from poor decisions increases the time needed to understand, debug, rework, and enhance code. Th

By Andrew Park | 2025-04-24 Every Product Leader dreams of having engineers who are mission-driven—who care deeply about solving customer problems, challenge assumptions, and shape the solution alongside Product and Design. What you want are engineering missionaries. But what many organizations unintentionally create are engineering mercenaries—teams trained to wait for instructions, deliver tasks, and stay disconnected from the “why.” And one of the most persistent reasons t

By Andrew Park | 2024-09-17 This morning, I had an insightful discussion with Gary Cohen about the metrics that dominate conversations in product development—flow, efficiency, and velocity. While these metrics can serve a purpose, we should be cautious about how much weight we give them. As product and engineering leaders, it’s our responsibility to ensure that we’re focused on outcomes, not just outputs, and that we preserve an environment where innovation can thrive alongsi

By Andrew Park | 2024-08-14 Product managers face significant challenges within Agile and Scrum frameworks due to their structured, sprint-based nature, which often conflicts with the broader, strategic responsibilities of product management. The role requires a long-term vision, extensive planning, and strategic decision-making, which clash with the short, iterative cycles of Agile sprints. Frequent interruptions from meetings and rigid sprint schedules disrupt the holistic

By Andrew Park | 2024-08-13 As a Vice President of Engineering since 2006, I’ve often worn the hat of a Product Manager on a part-time basis, particularly for our flagship analytics products. This dual role has provided me with unique insights into the critical importance of Product Management and the necessity of cultivating business empathy among technical performers. Throughout my career, I have guided my engineers to be willing and effective collaborators with their busin

By Andrew Park | 2024-08-09 Over the past 18+ years as a Vice President of Engineering, I've consistently managed to defy Brooks's Law in numerous situations when adding developers to late projects. Brooks's Law famously states that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" due to increased complexity and communication overhead. Here’s how I’ve successfully navigated this challenge: The first key factor is cultivating a culture where every software devel