Modernizing Spaceforce Capabilities
Cutting time and increasing deployment frequency of working, secure-software, in production that is used by their operators.
Company: US Space Force SLD45 Capabilities Development Division (CDD)
Role: Portfolio Design Lead, Rise8
Dates: July 2023-June 2024
Technology: RAD pipeline build onto of Platform One's Big bang, using NextJS. Website uses goHugo (Javascript and Go)
Location: United States (remote), Spaceforce Western Range - Cape Canaveral
Overview
I led design portfolio strategy for the US Space Force's Capabilities Development Division (CDD) whose managment became the overall leadership of SLD45 Range Management at the end of my contract. Our team's mission was to increase deployment frequency of working, secure-software, in production that was used by their operators while supporting four concurrent delivery teams under our portfolio.
My work provided service design support, surfacing the overall onboard to release process for delivery teams deploying applications onto the RAD platform. Our findings helped the team identify key areas of opportunity on increasing the deployment frequency of products to the range through a newly designed and built CI/CD security release pipeline and platform onboarding process. Led through example, our team showed how our client could move from a project-based execution strategy to a more mission-driven model in service to the range.
Results
- Design, built, and launched an improved CI/CD security release pipeline to support the Spaceforce’s (Launch Systems Command, SLD45 and SLD 30) goals to ship working software to operators faster.
- Design, built, and launched a self-serve platform landing page and informational site for application teams deploying onto the RAD platform.
- Reduced deployment cycle time from days to less than 1 hour.
- Design, built, and launched a vulnerability tracker for cyber security professionals to surface and track applications' cyber vulnerabilities identified through the pipeline.
- 16x reduction in cyber security approval time through an integrated security review process within our CI/CD pipeline.
- Improved platform onboarding by 92%, reducing onboarding time from 3 months to 1 week.
- Introduced a cultural shift from project-based thinking to mission driven objectives that support the overall goals of the range.
- Designed the presentation deck that secured General Panzenhagen's approval of a restructure, resulting in my client as the new leadership of SLD45.
Process
Utilizing a Service Blueprint to Visualize the System and Identify Opportunities
We needed visibility into the current deployment process for RAD before creating an overall strategy. As we interviewed with key stakeholders and observed current application teams, the design team started to track what we learned using a service blueprint. We focused on three major users in the system (application teams, platform team, and the cyber team) while taking note of other groups within the system.
Increasing Deployment Frequency Meant Creating Autonomy for Application Teams & Providing Visibility into the Health of the Platform
Through our interviews, the team identified key areas of opportunity:
- Personnels' clearance requirements resulted in months of delay for team members to gain access to necessary DOD systems.
- Application teams felt heavily reliant on SLD45 personnel to onboard and deploy, resulting in days of back and forth communication and delays.
- Application teams wanted to be empowered to solve their own problems and were willing to troubleshoot if they had the correct information.
- Important information was gated or not available even after meeting security requirements for onboarding.
- Deployment using the current pipeline was very manual, requiring DOD personnel and DOD personnel were overwhelmed with work.
- Cyber security required manual spreadsheets and often occurred late in the process when context was lost, resulting in months of delayed releases.
Strategy: Automate Deployments, Create Self-service Onboarding, and Incorporate Cyber Security Early and Often
As a team, we came up with a strategy that addressed both the technological and user needs with an overarching goal to empower application teams to be more self reliant while working with the RAD platform and to track our progress through metrics:
- Upgrade the CI/CD pipeline and automate where possible. This ultimately resulted in a reduced deployment cycle time from months/days to averaging less than 1 hr (including cyber security review).
- Improve the onboarding experience for application teams and make it self-service - shifting reliance from DOD personnel telling them what to do to teams finding the information for themselves. This resulted in a 92% improvement for time it took for teams to onboard to RAD (including DOD clearance requirements).
- Make need to know information accessible. For our case, we created a website for the platform to intake new development teams and added a link to necessary informational sites on the range, the RAD platform and how it works. We saw a 100% usage from existing teams on RAD.
- Create asynchronous communication channels on Mattermost (a tool similar to Slack) to help teams ask questions and reach out to key stakeholders like the platform team and cyber teams.
- Incorporate the cyber process and their needs into the onboarding and deployment processes. This included creating a cyber security vulnerability tracking system that integrated with our pipeline and Gitlab. This gave the cyber team visibility into upcoming deployments before they happened, providing them the necessary lead time to talk to teams and track their cyber risks before they released, resulting in a 16x reduction in cyber approval processing time.
Visibility into the Deployment Process Made it Easier for SLD45 to Assess the Health of their Platform
Because we surfaced RAD's deployment experience, it made it easier for SLD45 to know where the bottle necks occurred and propose changes that could be tracked and managed. The combined tooling of the platform landing page (website), the vulnerability tracker, and the pipeline coupled with the use of Mattermost and Gitlab enabled our team to provide ways to track and measure the health of the RAD platform which ultimately made it easier for my client to manage the program. This process also provided alignment across the organization and with the contractors they hired, making it easier for all stakeholders involved to work together.
Process Improvements Led to Promotions
Ultimately, these process improvements led to a cultural shift from project-based thinking to mission driven objectives that support the overall goals of the range. I worked with our client leadership and my team to create a presentation highlighting these changes and how they positively impacted the range. It ultimately led to promotions and greater management and oversight for my client. It was a huge achievement.
