Ep. 59 How to Deliver Software with Impact

March 30, 2023

If you toss a baseball anywhere inside the Washington, D.C. beltway, you will probably hit a company that develops software. Well, what differentiates them? Size? Degrees the staff hold? The number of contracts?

Today, we sit down with a couple of software development experts from Excella to talk about completing more that the bare minimum for a project. They argue, quite cogently, that quality is the characteristic that is the hardest to achieve and has the most lasting impact on federal projects.

Two representatives from Excella are in the studio to argue their case. Doguhan Uluca and Keith Mealo from Excella sat down to discuss everything from “shift left” to legacy systems to elite performance.

The interview begins with a discussion about FISMA High Impact and FedRAMP. From there, they provide opinions on memory safe-languages and cloud-native. They both have extensive experience with highly sensitive software development projects.

"(artificial intelligence) . . . someone smart told me once you have a choice between people writing bad code or computers writing bad code

Doguhan Uluca, Excella Tweet

Some companies look at a project and set up a checklist and methodically go down the list. When the minimum is completed, the project is complete. Keith Mealo suggests that one must have full-orb comprehension of the system. A person must examine the consequence of solving the problem, not just checking a box.

During the discussion, the moderator tried to draw a parallel between an automobile getting a state inspection. A mechanic may see examine the seat belt and hit the check box. A better inspector may ride with the driver to make sure the safety device is in use. However, the master mechanic will notice a problem with the brakes and not release the vehicle until the entire vehicle is safe.

If you enjoyed this article, you may want to listen to Ep. 53 Process Automation for Large Systems