milestones that ensure readiness to begin development of highly complex and tightly integrated hardware and software. However, Agile inherently serves as a risk mitigation strategy, since early working applies to programs with software costs over $15M and with COTS or Government off-the-Shelf (GOTS) hardware installation or technology refresh. It does not apply to business systems or IS embedded in weapon Key Questions to Validate Systems Engineering Strategies:  Does the program leverage existing hardware platforms?33  Does the design integrate mature technologies and align with enterprise architectures

removing artificial barriers that have made the accidental tasks inordinately hard, such as severe hardware constraints, awkward programming languages, lack of machine time. How much of what software engineers desperate cries for a silver bullet – something to make software costs drop as rapidly as computer hardware costs do…. Not only are there no silver bullets now in view, the very nature of software makes breakthrough promises to give the sort of magical results with which we are so familiar in the hardware area, we must consider those attacks which address the essence of the software problem, the formulation