Air Force COOL and 18F: Partnership and Flight Operations Software Agile Lessons Learned

Major Taylor Wilson served as the program manager and product owner for USAF Center Ops On-Line (COOL), the Air Force Materiel Command’s web-based flight operations software. This presentation serves as a quick look at the history and renewed maturity of the Department of Defense’s only government-owned flight operations software.

Through the help of 18F via their “Path Analysis” and “Experiment and Iterate” phases, COOL agile DevOps practices became less of a buzzword and more of a movement towards providing structure and value to the wide user base of the Air Force’s flight test enterprise.

Presenter:

Major Taylor M. Wilson is the Mission Systems Chief and Instructor Test Pilot, United States Air Force Test Pilot School, Edwards AFB, California. He directs the 150-hour academic and flying schedule for the $33 million US Air Force Test Pilot School Mission Systems curriculum. He is a dual-qualified fighter test pilot, leading $1 million weapon, structures, and functional test flights for unique $1.1 billion F-22A and F-16 test fleet. Prior to his current position, the major served as the acting Director of Operations and experimental test pilot for the 411th Flight Test Squadron as well as Program Manager of Air Force Materiel Command’s flight operations agile software development team.

This talk is hosted by the DevOp Community and Digital.gov.