comments on Ed Berard's S/W reuse part 5

[CONTR47@NOSC-TECR.ARPA]

1.   I believe that the contractors skill at S/W reuse will
provide him the most advantage at bid time. The Government is
*very* considerate of price when awarding contracts. The contractors
who are most skilled at reuse will win the most contracts
while those who bid all new code in order to collect the higher
fees will suffer.
2.   My experience at a large DoD contractor was contrary to
what is being told to Ed. It was *very* difficult to get
add-on money to either CPFF or FFP contracts unless the
Government was clearly getting additional value for the money.
I have heard extreme examples of rip-offs during the
Vietnam war but all the time I worked there it was not
under war emergency conditions and the Government
was a *tough* customer.
3.  My personal opinion is to question the data being told
to Ed by "management". My experience has been that
administrative management doesn't always know what is
going on; The program manager does but he wouldn't tell
so unless you have some clout (like work for the
Defense Contract Audit Agency) you are not going
to know "the facts". The work I recently did on Ada
cost modelling showed us that very few people really knew
what was going on. Only by careful recall on the part
of the development manager could he remember why certain costs
were unusual values. It was the unusual values that caused him to
recall that reuse played an *important* part in S/W actual
costs. Since we have now come full circle back to the
value of reuse I'll sign-off.
regards, sam harbaugh
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