ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. -- “Pursue Mission Excellence,” “Invest in our People,” “Improve and Sustain the Complex;” the three priorities laid out by AEDC leadership “to prove the systems required to meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy” and put us on a path towards “Second to None.”
What does mission excellence mean for a professional Developmental Test & Evaluation (DT&E) organization? How does an organization balance the demands of today’s mission while investing and preparing to execute tomorrow’s? As Space and Missiles internalized the AEDC priorities, the Branch leadership team developed three principles to guide decisions: Workforce before Facilities; Quality before Capacity; Capacity before New Capability.
People execute the mission; people solve problems! Take care of the Workforce before Facilities.
Trust the workforce to execute the mission, identify issues and define requirements. Give them opportunities to experiment with innovative solutions utilizing the resources they already have. (Every acquisition professional remembers non-material solutions are preferred.)
A trained workforce has a lead-time, requires maintenance and has a sustainment tail, just like facilities. Make sure to align the development of a workforce with a new capability. After all, a test capability includes both people and infrastructure. AEDC can’t deliver mission excellence without its workforce.
AEDC, through the Test Branches, Squadrons and Operating Locations, is responsible for developing and maintaining a professional DT&E workforce. Professionally executed DT&E is critical to acquiring systems that meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy.
Space and Missiles focuses on four workforce competencies (technical, operational, safety and security) to achieve mission excellence. Not just competence, but excellence resides in the workforce throughout AEDC, and must be integrated into a cohesive team with unity of purpose and mission focus.
Technical competence is the foundation of the AEDC DT&E workforce. It is essential to performing the functions of T&E: maturing system designs, managing risks, identifying and resolving deficiencies, assisting in reduction of unintended cost increases, and ensuring systems are operationally mission capable. AEDC T&E professionals provide the technical competence for both test facility/environment and system-under-test to design T&E programs that provide decision quality information.
Operational competence has dual meaning for professional testers.
The first is employment of facilities and creating operationally relevant environments for the systems-under-test. It includes executing ground and flight test in a safe, secure, effective and efficient manner; the fundamental principles of Crew Resource Management; and the mechanical aspects of execution.
The second, operational competence, is extrapolating results to the ability to deliver warfighting capability. This requires a workforce knowledgeable in the system’s operational concepts and environments. This knowledge is gained through close collaboration with our mission partners.
Technical and operational competence are the foundations of safety competence. Understanding how the system interacts with the test environment and predicting system response to test conditions allows the workforce to tailor risk management tools to accomplish the mission. The DT&E workforce must then be trained and qualified to employ those safety principles and requirements during test execution.
Security competence cannot be overstated. Safeguarding the information required to plan and execute tests, as well as the data produced during testing, is essential to successful mission execution. The ability to identify, create, handle, process, store and disseminate information in a secure and timely manner is vital support for test programs.
A T&E workforce that meets the four competencies must focus on Quality before Capacity.
Defining and documenting the expectations is a critical step for delivering mission excellence. The good habits and process discipline developed with a quality focus will increase efficiency. The workforce should understand, document and communicate their definition of quality and the metrics used to capture status. Let them determine which processes, tools, documentation and training gaps exist. Leadership should provide the resources to close the gaps. The easiest way to increase capacity is to make sure we deliver the right information the first time.
Once we’re routinely delivering quality T&E, make sure we’re executing at the required Capacity before New Capability.
Strive to be the expert, not just competent, in today’s mission. That focus reveals constraints and limitations in test capabilities for future systems. Establishing requirements traceability provides the foundation for defining, planning and growing into tomorrow’s mission. Common commercial economic terms like time value of money, return on investment and lost opportunity should be tailored to our mission and acquisition processes. Communicating what matters when, knowing how and when we “break even,” and knowing what we’re sacrificing are key to informing leadership about our future test capabilities.
These three principles guide the decisions within Space and Missiles. They directly tie to the AEDC priorities, and put us on the path to mission excellence. When we put the workforce first, they’ll deliver. They’ll earn the National trust by proving AEDC can deliver the DT&E required for warfighting capabilities Second to None.