Engineering of Complex Systems at NAVAIR: We Must Do More With Less!

At NAVAIR, we are experiencing a dwindling engineering workforce at the same time that we are trying to meet increasing demands for support to our warfighters.

We have a combination of efforts uplifting the skill sets of multiple levels of the scientist and engineer (S&E) community throughout NAVAIR. These include newly-hired S&Es, young journeymen S&Es working across multiple product and program teams (IPTs, TPOs, PMAs) and now senior Systems Engineering (SE) technical leads and CHief ENGineers (CHENGS).

This approach includes training S&Es in the traditional areas of knowledge, skills, and abilities. What we are doing distinctly different is adding to this instruction actual project experiences that can be applied directly and immediately to their current day-jobs!

This exceptional teaching is performed as a team effort from expert contract-support personnel along with organic NAVAIR SE tech leads who work together effectively to fill the expanding engineering wisdom gap at NAVAIR.

About the Presenter

Jeff Schwalb is a computer scientist and has been supporting Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) since 1984. He has over 20 years of experience developing and acquiring real-time embedded software systems for avionics, weapons, and range instrumentation systems. He also began collaborating with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), learning and applying CMM key practices, becoming a certified Personal Software Process℠ (PSP℠) instructor and then a certified Team Software Process℠ (TSP℠) coach. Over the last 25 years, he has taught and consulted with hundreds of scientists and engineers in various forms of personal engineering processes, and has coached dozens of projects in the launch and operations of team project planning and tracking.

In 2017, Jeff connected with the SEI on the establishment of the organization we know today as the Software Excellence Alliance (SEA). Today, Jeff continues to work within the SEA to identify and establish pragmatic, value-added solutions to problems currently affecting the software community. He is currently serving as a member of the SEA Executive Team and as a supporting member of SEA working groups in areas such as membership, Agile community networking, and knowledge transfer.