What Did Bofors Do?

What Did Bofors Do?

[Charles H. Sampson]

     I keep hearing that Bofors (a Swedish company, I think) has devel-
oped a library of reusable Ada code in the area of Navy tactical pro-
grams that is giving them a huge business advantage over their competi-
tion.  Can anyone confirm that?  More to the point, can anyone point to 
a generally available paper that describes what they did in reasonable 
detail?  I'm interested in how they decided what should go into their 
library.  I'd also like to know how they justified the costs of develop-
ment.  (After years as a technical weenie, I can't believe I'm looking 
at issues like that last one.)

                                Charlie

Re: What Did Bofors Do?

[Jim Showalter]

sampson@cod.nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson) writes:

>     I keep hearing that Bofors (a Swedish company, I think) has devel-
>oped a library of reusable Ada code in the area of Navy tactical pro-
>grams that is giving them a huge business advantage over their competi-
>tion.  Can anyone confirm that?  More to the point, can anyone point to 
>a generally available paper that describes what they did in reasonable 
>detail?  I'm interested in how they decided what should go into their 
>library.  I'd also like to know how they justified the costs of develop-
>ment.  (After years as a technical weenie, I can't believe I'm looking 
>at issues like that last one.)

Bofors did a number of things correctly. First of all, they knew in advance
that they were on the hook to write the software for four ships, so they
had a strong incentive up front to look for ways to reuse code across
the four ships to minimize costs. Secondly, they got in bed early and
vigorously with Rational, and made use of Rational for consulting, training,
and tools. Third, the project was staffed by very good people with a
real commitment to doing good quality work in a timely manner. Fourth,
they had a strong chief architect with a solid understanding of Ada,
object-oriented design, reuse, and the application domain.

Rational has a paper documenting--with hard numbers--some of the more
notable successes of the Bofors project. In particular, Bofors estimates
that they saved $117 million across the four projects through reuse of
code. $117 million. And yes, Bofors does indeed have a strategic
advantage now because they are able to clone what they learned on this
project for other projects. It would be nice if other companies would
wake up and smell the coffee...

For a copy of the Bofors paper, I suggest contacting Nellie Connors at
Rational, at (408) 496-3600. You might also ask for the paper on the
STANFINS-R success, which is equally remarkable and in an MIS domain
as opposed to real-time embedded.
-- 
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