Treffer: Training the DoD Software Acquisition Professional

Defense Acquisition University (DAU) is the department's premier software acquisition training institution. Software applications are now the primary method of providing warfighter capability in all of our programs. Education about how to do software acquisition management of the requirements, design, development deployment, operations, maintenance and disposal of software applications is a key factor to providing operationally effective, efficient and timely capabilities for our warfighters. DAU educates our DoD Acquisition professionals with the evidence-based best practices, lessons learned and DoD policy mandates that allow our warfighters to receive highly capable and reliable software-based capabilities. This article describes where DAU is at with software acquisition training, where we are headed in the next couple of years and the long term realization that software now impacts all systems and all career fields. This article will help the reader understand the current DAU training model and how DAU is working with the IT Functional Leader to identify ways to train all of DoD as needed to ensure we deliver software acquisition management training that improves the IT acquisition outcomes for our warfighters. ; Published in CrossTalk, p19-31, Jan/Feb 2015.