Paladin's Digital Fire Control System - a Technology Upgrade

On contract with Northrop Grumman, AdaRose was the prime software developer on the Government's Integrated Product Team for a major technology upgrade to the Paladin Self Propelled Howitzer. The software development effort involved over 230,000 lines of Ada 95 and C/C++ Code plus integration with several 3rd party software packages. AdaRose successfully managed quick-turnaround requests for high technical risk tasks, helped the hardware developer troubleshoot numerous HW issues, and demonstrated that it can effectively manage both product content and process innovation in support of Federal clients. Numerous Metrics were kept by the AdaRose Management Team to provide program visibility to the rest of the IPT. AdaRose's successful software development effort was noteworthy because it was accomplished in parallel with a developing hardware baseline. AdaRose president George Holt published a description of the Process and Risk Management approach AdaRose used for this development effort.

AdaRose designed, coded and tested the necessary software changes to re-host & integrate software from a US Army Artillery system to a new suite of hardware. The Paladin Self Propelled Howitzer's Automatic Fire Control System (AFCS) software baseline was re-hosted and successfully integrated with the new Paladin Digital Fire Control System (PDFCS) hardware, to produce a new PDFCS V11P System. Included in this effort were the following sub-tasks:

Technical Performance:

AdaRose developed software that was not anticipated, but absolutely necessary for the program, e.g., four new device drivers, extensive Built in Test (BIT) modifications, extensive recoding for a new and improved Muzzle Velocity Radar System (MVRS), etc. Most of the coding and testing of this software had to take place on the existing legacy system until the new hardware became available.

The condensed schedule on this program presented a high degree of schedule and cost risk. To mitigate this risk, used a parallel spiral development effort and instead of the two SW drops planned for in the Schedule, AdaRose started delivering Feature Sets -- more than nine deliveries of executable software containing various degrees of functionality were made to the Government. This along with moving up the Documentation delivery schedule allowed Government Testers, QA, and IV&V personnel to gain familiarity with the software and be ready for an early start to Formal Qualification Testing on the System and Software. Additionally, AdaRose went into an extended work mode to bring in the schedule as much as possible.

Numerous SW and HW diagnostic tools were used on this program and a solid QA and Configuration Management program utilizing ClearCase was employed to keep the program on track.

Paladin's Digital Fire Control System - a Technology Upgrade

AdaRose Inc., a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), was a key player for a major technology upgrade to an Army artillery system - the Paladin Digital Fire Control System.

Engineering Capabilities

AdaRose engineers are often called upon to tackle the toughest problems. Whether it's hardware or software, full-up systems development or trouble shooting, we'll minimize your risk and lower your life cycle cost.

Articles by George Holt:

"Software Risk Management from a System Perspective"

"Risk Management Fundamentals in Software Development"