In his memo Specification & Standards - A New Way of Doing Business, Secretary Perry states, "greater use of performance and commercial specifications and standards is one of the most important actions that DoD must take to ensure we are able to meet our military, economic, and policy objectives in the future." The memo directs a number of DoD organizations to take immediate action to implement the recommendations of the Process Action Team formed by the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition Reform) to develop a strategy to decrease reliance on military specifications and standards. Policy changes include the following:

• "Performance specifications shall be used when purchasing new systems, major modifications, upgrades to current systems, and nondevelopmental and commercial items, for programs in any acquisition category."
• "Waivers for the use of military specifications and standards must be approved by the Milestone Decision Authority."
• In the area of management and manufacturing, program managers shall use specifications and standards for guidance only.
• In the area of configuration management, to the maximum extent practical, "the Government shall maintain configuration control of the functional and performance requirements only, giving contractors responsibility for the detailed design."

Secretary Perry encourages partnerships with industry associations to develop non-government standards for replacement of military standards where practical.

This memorandum defines a far reaching policy. Scheduled discussions of standards, such as the panel on "Government Use of Commercial Standards," at the Software Engineering Standards Forum (Denver, Colorado; 12-14 September 1994) clearly need to reflect this policy change.

Director Burt's memo is titled Development Test and Evaluation (DT&E) Policy Guidance for Software-Intensive Systems in Support of Recommendations from the General Accounting Office (GAO). The GAO made four recommendations in their report Test and Evaluation: DoD Has Been Slow in Improving Testing of Software-Intensive Systems (GAO/NSIAD-93-198, 29 September 1993):

• Establish testing requirements for software maturity, regression testing, and temporary software fixes;
• The results of Developmental Test and Evaluation must demonstrate an appropriate level of software maturity prior to the start of Operational Test and Evaluation;
• Define software-related exit criteria for certifying a system's readiness for Operational Testing at Milestone II; and
• A common core set of management metrics are to be developed and approved at Milestone II.

The memorandum has a heavy emphasis on the use of measurement and metrics. In the implementation of the first recommendation, the memo calls for the use of a maturity metric for monitoring and managing the program throughout the Development Phase. The memo cites the Army's Software Test and Evaluation Panel (STEP)* as a basis for the maturity metric. To satisfy the fourth GAO recommendation, the policy calls for the use of the following metrics to be implemented by DoD Components for major software-intensive programs: Fault Profile, Cost, Schedule, and Requirements Traceability.

The full implementation of the GAO recommendations implies a strong measurement program. It certainly provides a boost to the measurement handbook, Measurement Guidebook MIL-HDBK-SWM Software Metrics, under development by the Joint Logistics Commander Computer Resources Management Committee (JLC-CRM**).

U. S. Army

Operational Test and Evaluation Command

4501 Ford Avenue, Suite 860

Alexandria, VA 22302

(703) 756-1817, FAX (703) 756-5809