The Need for Agile Program Documentation

The past decade has brought much change for warfighters, necessitating new materiel solutions to ensure our soldiers have what they need to accomplish the mission. Over the course of the last 10 years, doctrine, strategy, operations, tactics, techniques, procedures, as well as the threat and battlefield environments have changed significantly. From the initial invasion, to the withdrawal from Iraq, to the transfer of mission to Afghanistan, requirements for soldier s equipment, vehicles, surveillance, and weapons systems have challenged materiel developers to keep pace with the speed of war. A known program that demonstrated the government s remarkable ability to streamline the process to develop, evaluate, and field within 2 years is the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle. When an urgent requirement necessitated a rapid response, all the stakeholders from the resourcers, developers, evaluators, and sustainers executed a more streamlined process to get capability to the field faster, albeit with some challenges.