Crossing the Valley of Death1
Most promising defense software dies somewhere between a successful pilot and permanent funding. I led a dual-use small drone program through that stretch, from a proof of concept the community loved to a dependable product with a long-term home in the U.S. Navy.
The situation
Cheap, Chinese-made commercial drones had become a real threat to U.S. operations. Our program started as a proof of concept in DDS’s counter-drone portfolio, and it caught fire fast within the community!
But demand had outrun the product and the team, and the community was feeling it. Installing it could brick the hardware or fail to deliver what we promised, with no telling which you’d get, and DDS didn’t have the budget to carry the program on its own.
What I did
- 1
Made it dependable
I went after the friction that was breaking operators’ trust, like installation and onboarding. I managed an engineering team across separate web, mobile and desktop applications, and grew it to ten by adding two critical roles: QA and technical writing.2 Our team’s BHAG3: get every operator to fly their first mission successfully within 15 minutes.
- 2
Grew it like a consumer product
I sat with our users to get smart on their world and how they used our product. We stitched data instrumentation together across key journeys so we could paint the picture with numbers too.
Along the way, I worked the program into the waiver approvals units needed to operate, and once we were in a good place, I made our roadmap public so operators knew what was coming and when.
- 3
Got it a permanent home
When DDS couldn’t carry the program alone, I rallied the counter-drone community behind it,4 and they answered, overwhelmingly. Meanwhile, I found creative ways to keep us funded, including a new paid offering,5 and the team secured an interim Authority to Operate, with a path to the Navy.
All of this while our contract vehicle expired, I became the program’s Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) and saw us through a recompete to a new contract award. And we lived through a string of near government shutdowns!6
What I learned
Your customer is your biggest advocate. Without the community’s overwhelming response, a mission-critical program would have died in the valley.
Use your voice & take a stand in what you believe. Service members at home and abroad relied on it for mission-critical purposes. All I did was amplify their stories.
A small team can do a lot. Ten people and $2M went a long way.
I’m really proud of what this team did for our community, and national security at large.
1 In defense tech, the “Valley of Death” is the gap between a prototype that works and a production contract that proves someone will pay for it. More from Vannevar Labs ↩
2 This was before AI could help! ↩
3 BHAG, a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal,” is a bold long-term goal meant to rally a team. More on BHAGs ↩
4 More on this soon: a Substack post on democracy at its finest, the American way. ↩
5 With an SLA, even! ↩
6 Congress averted nine funding deadlines during my time at DDS. ↩
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