Throughout 2020, the Tech Council has continued to deliver on its purpose statement through the facilitation of communications amongst teams, contributions to research integrity and quality and sharing of lessons learned on the COVID-driven changes in workforce structure. These contributions are in the spirit of delivering excellence to our customers and supporting our teams that deliver that excellence daily. Our focus has been on three main points:
Cross-Team Communication Flows
Our regular meetings have shifted focus in 2020, with major topics including DevOps and development automation, technical brainstorming and continuous alignment of AIS’s unique business requirements with the compliance initiative. We’ve also been sharing lessons learned through COVID-19 and how we can successfully on-ramp and engage an almost entirely remote staff while staying highly responsive to our customers. Information sharing across our company is invaluable. Technical leaders from the Adaptive Systems Technology and the Cross Domain Virtualization Solutions Teams collaborated on a lessons learned exchange with regards to effectively shaping our software development processes to our customer’s needs. As a result, the processes are continually evolving to be efficient, effective and agile.
Research Integrity and Product Quality
Internal research and development (IRaD) projects set direction for long-term initiatives and strategy areas, so making sound decisions is critical. Our feedback helps shape concepts and ideas that create our future programs and provide value to customers and stakeholders. In collaboration and close alignment with the AIS Chief Technology Officer, the Tech Council is actively involved in the IRaD proposal review process and a subset of members have contributed to strategy for projects in 2021 and beyond.
Facilitating New Research Opportunities
An initial down-select of government Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) topics by the Tech Council and Business Development Department provides potential proposal teams a more focused selection of topics with clear alignment to AIS capabilities and future strategies. In 2020, we identified Tech Council representatives to sup-port the effort and had two rounds of filtering, reviewing more than 100 SBIR topics to allow potential AIS proposal authors to quickly review highly applicable topics before turning their attention to the broader list.
Looking Ahead
In 2021, the Tech Council is looking forward to staying true to its purpose statement through direct daily engagement with teams while also further engaging business development and culture initiatives.
About the AIS Tech Council
The purpose of the Tech Council is to provide advisement and support on issues and initiatives with regards to technical information flows, research integrity, product quality, enhancing culture, enabling vision and fostering an enjoyable work environment.
