In this extended interview, Nick Sinai, venture partner at Insight Venture Partners, discusses the Kessel Run digital service team, and how they’re making strides in software within the Pentagon.
The Air Force’s Kessel Run digital service is providing some of the fastest software development in government, and other agencies at the Department of Defense are taking notice. Nick Sinai, venture partner at Insight Venture Partners, says that that the key to their success is their development model. “They really are building software in an agile fashion. They are using what’s called DevSecOps; development, security and operations, all together. Traditionally the way the DoD builds software is we do acquisition for years, we do requirements for years, we build for years, and then it takes years to deploy the software. How do you do this in a much faster cycle time? They are actually deploying to test hundreds of times a week and production something like 30 times a month. It is that more continuous deployment of software,” Sinai said. “They have uniformed service members, Air Force civilian and contractors working together side by side. They’re all wearing t-shirts and jeans so you can’t tell the rank, and they have small interdisciplinary teams, which I think is really important in how software is done today.”
