Creating and Using Virtual Prototyping Software: Principles and Practices

Review from Captain John R. Bramer, USN, Retired

The authors’ 100+ years combined experience in Department of Defense (DoD) programs, utilizing physics based computational mathematics and models in engineering, describes their uniquely qualified positions to write this book. Together they have provided understandable yet technically sufficient guidance for program managers, engineers and scientists wanting to use software prototypes to break out of the traditional design, build, test paradigm of product development. This classic cycle has grown too time consuming and expensive, with its burdensome record keeping requirements, for the needed rapid development of today’s competitive products. The ever-increasing computational power of computers makes the authors’ paradigm busting proposition practical.

BUT BEWARE! Approach this volume and its described tools cautiously! Why? Simple: what the authors describe undertaking is a seriously challenging proposition for any program or product groups’ leadership intending to utilize the power of Virtual Prototyping. Company and program leadership needs to understand they are committing to a long-term proposition for changing how they develop products. Any company, or government program’s product producing organization, is shrouded in a status quo bureaucracy. Of course the individuals involved will generally all profess to wanting to be more efficient, streamlined, and cost-effective. Sadly the groups they belong to, and especially the well-intentioned leaders of their various developmental groups, i.e., research, development, testing, etc., have careers vested in ensuring their pieces of the whole remain engaged, relevant and, especially if in government organizations, growing. Virtual prototyping as described in this book threatens them all.

The authors superbly, and very straight forwardly, walk the reader and / or user through appropriately engaging with available and developing Virtual Prototyping tools. The book begins with a discussion regarding why software is key to Virtual Prototyping and how it is different, that it specifically needs to be continually developed with consumer interactions. There is then a program managers’ focused discussion regarding cautions about using Open-Source Software (OSS) and an awareness, of licensing issues, when using others’ software.

The book continues with a helpfully worded cautionary chapter on the challenges of committing to Virtual Prototyping development. Its utilization requires up front and continual commitment to its development and funding throughout a program’s evolution. The payoff for its use is not quick, and as time goes by the status quo bureaucracy will continually whittle away at embracing

the change in infrastructure. Thus, the following chapters focus on not overpromising results, especially too quickly, and managing the risk of Virtual Prototyping utilization. As the authors state, “Identifying the risks to this (the undertaken) Virtual Prototyping enterprise at the outset is essential, as is not letting them slip from focus.”

The central chapters outline the steps necessary to undertake Virtual Prototyping and describe why an agile software development approach works much better than an all too often embedded burdensome strict processes approach. They describe how to select and mature members for a virtual prototyping enterprise team, and how to ensure the individuals’ and the total team’s developments continue. A discussion of the importance and balancing of automation adds to the how to of engineering this undertaking.

Lastly, the authors appropriately focus on the need to provide ample and consistent funding for undertaking Virtual Prototyping. They accurately point out that this may well be the most challenging aspect of the effort. The established bureaucracy is used to, and watches for, ever advancing measurable progress through the established developmental metric processes. Virtual Prototyping is effectively a new development process; thus, its measures of progress may not be measurable, nor even visible to, the establishment, which is looking to ‘help your program’ get back on track, regardless of the fact this more historic path is unsustainable and unaffordable. The authors’ guidance is to “Keep auditable records of all financial transactions” and to continuously educate and maintain creditability with your organization’s key stakeholders’ financial team.

Any established bureaucracy is strong and comes together to fend off changes threatening its well-intentioned divisions of control. Virtual Prototyping has tremendous potential to shorten development timelines, reduce costs, increase the effectiveness of development and operational testing, and thus more efficiently deliver user embraced end products. The authors adroitly describe its successful commercial use by companies like the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Ford, Whirlpool and Proctor and Gamble.

The DoD, under its High-Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) and Computational Research and Engineering Tools and Environment (CREATE) Program, has successfully introduced Virtual Prototyping within its various engineering organizations for the general development of ships and aircraft control systems, structural loads, structural dynamics, propulsion systems and overarching systems of systems. Many commercial companies’ groups’ have similarly embraced their use; thus, the utilization of these tools is within reach for DoD program and product leaders bold enough to fully utilize their significant capabilities for the development and delivery of their individual groups’ products.

So, as both a supporter of this text as well as a major program manager who believes in the power of Virtual Prototyping, I encourage the reader to please be bold, Think long term. Use these tools to exponentially advance your portfolio of products and programs. This excellent

book provides the guidance necessary to take this path less traveled. Fight for and protect the investment needed. Your bosses, stockholders, corporate and Government leaders, and most importantly your customers, will thank you.

Disclaimer. Any reader of this review will note I am specifically mentioned and thanked in the Acknowledgements section for “providing support for writing this book.” I am also thanked for providing a gift of “Hugh Montgomery’s book Bureaucratic Nirvana, Life in the Center of the Box (the Pentagon), an essential guide to successfully navigating the DoD bureaucracy.” As a former ACAT I, II, and III Navy Program Manager I fought the bureaucracy for years struggling to more rapidly and cost effectively deliver products to the Fleet and Warfighter. I am delighted to have been asked to review this book and totally support the authors’ outlined path to a better program development future.

―CAPTAIN JOHN R. BRAMER, USN