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March 20, 2016

How-To Maintain Project Delivery Dates – Skip Critical Testing

Filed under: Programming,Project Management,Security — Patrick Durusau @ 4:25 pm

David William documents a tried and true way to maintain a project schedule, skip critical testing in: Pentagon skips tests on key component of U.S.-based missile defense system.

How critical?

Here’s part of David’s description:

Against the advice of its own panel of outside experts, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency is forgoing tests meant to ensure that a critical component of the nation’s homeland missile defense system will work as intended.

The tests that are being skipped would evaluate the reliability of small motors designed to help keep rocket interceptors on course as they fly toward incoming warheads.

The components, called alternate divert thrusters, are vital to the high-precision guidance required to intercept and destroy an enemy warhead traveling at supersonic speed – a feat likened to hitting one speeding bullet with another.

The interceptors, deployed in underground silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County and at Ft. Greely, Alaska, are the backbone of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system (GMD) – the nation’s main defense against a sneak attack by North Korea or Iran.

Hmmm, hitting a supersonic target with a supersonic bullet and you don’t test the aiming mechanism that makes them collide?

How critical does that sound?

The consequences of failure, assuming the entire program isn’t welfare for the contractors and their employees, could be a nuke landing on the West Coast of the United States.

Does that make it sound more critical?

Or do we need to guess which city? Los Angeles, San Diego, would increase property values in San Jose so there would be an off-set to take into account.

Here’s my advice: Don’t ever skip critical testing or continue to participate in a project that skips critical testing. Walk away.

Not quietly, tell everyone you know of the skipped testing. NDAs be damned.

No one is well served by skipped testing.

A lack of testing has lead to the broken Internet of Things.

Is that what you want?

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