Business Commons^™

Agile Software Development: Creating A Cost Of Delay Framework For Air Force Software Factories, J. Goljan, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Scott Drylie, Edward D. White

Faculty Publications

The Air Force software development environment is experiencing a paradigm shift. The 2019 Defense Innovation Board concluded that speed and cycle time must become the most important software metrics if the US military is to maintain its advantage over adversaries.¹ This article proposes utilizing a cost-o­f-d­elay (CoD) framework to prioritize projects toward optimizing readiness. Cost-­of-d­elay is defined as the economic impact resulting from a delaying product delivery or, said another way, opportunity cost. In principle, CoD assesses the negative impacts resulting from changes to the priority of a project.