Case Study: Standing up Physical and Development Environment for Air Force Software Factory

Challenge/Scope

Our U.S. Air Force Software Factory customer provides key software factory function used for the development and delivery of solutions for some of the USAF’s most challenging problems – using experimental, cloud-based technologies and commercial best practices. The software factory was expanding and needed a new secure development facility and asset management of the toolchain licenses and configuration.

Approach/Solution

Highlight delivered a turnkey software environment providing all physical space, infrastructure, personnel, equipment, supplies, business and software tools, for personnel providing Agile development, Extreme Programming, DevSecOps, and Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) of software. Highlight worked with the USAF to lease a modern co-working space, built the network, procured computers and software (over $1M of software), and worked with USAF security to accredit the Experimentation Lab facility. This provided a paired programming environment solution with a maximum 350 workstations at full operational capacity. We delivered “DevSecOps environment as a service” where we are fully responsible for the outsourced development environment. Our engineers implemented, patched, monitored performance, and maintained the cloud-based toolchain used by development teams, that includes the latest DevSecOps and CI/CD tools.

Highlight worked with USAF to develop and implement a strategy for acquiring and preparing for new solutions for the software development environment and the toolchain  – performing the necessary actions to support the factory’s existing and evolving software integration needs in all environments (development, testing/staging, evaluation, resolution, and production) to support development, security, platform enablement, and business operations.  We streamlined the software procurement process and provided license management, annual renewal reporting, and software licenses renewals.

Capabilities

• Software Factory
• Asset Management
• DevSecOps
• ToolChain as a Service
• Facilities Establishment and Management

Results/Outcomes

This facility was one of the first, true modernization laboratories for DoD software development practices to ultimately deliver highly effective defect-free software from non-cleared USAF personnel to be integrated into a cleared TS/SCI system. Highlight provided not only the lab space, infrastructure, cloud hosting, and equipment, but also managed the CI/CD DevSecOps toolchain and provided agile coaching support to the lab program.