Kessel Run’s flagship office has all the trappings of a high flying startup: open floor plans, glass-walled meeting rooms, whiteboards on wheels, and shared spaces. The laid-back office design is complemented by the company dress code; a t-shirt and jeans. But, looks can be deceiving. This team of programmers, product managers, and designers operate within the United States Air Force to provide the software that guides Airmen through training and combat.
photo: view from the Kessel Run office in downtown Boston
It takes Kessel Run four months to get an idea from the whiteboard to the field, which makes them 24 times faster at developing software than the rest of the Air Force. This success was met with additional investment, and over the last 2 ½ years Kessel Run grew from 25 employees to 1,200.
As Kessel Run has grown from their initial lean startup to a larger organization they have begun to see decreasing returns on the Air Force’s investment of additional money and personnel. This has sparked a fear that the organization is facing serious growing pains that are prohibiting these returns, including exponential technical complexity and a growing internal bureaucracy.
It is this challenge that our team is working to solve. We are a group of Harvard students studying public policy, computer science, and digital government. Over the next two months, we will be working with Kessel Run to improve the way it deploys and develops software as part of a Technology and Innovation in Government field lab. This course, now in its fifth iteration, employs students to solve government problems with real-world clients.
Understanding Kessel Run
Kessel Run started as a small project within the Defense Innovation Unit. Since its inception it has brought together contractors, active duty military, and civilian technologists in an attempt to create a new way of developing software for the United States Air Force.
photo: active duty member of the U.S. Air Force on the way to the Kessel Run office
The Defense Innovation Board, a group that advises the Department of Defense (DoD) on innovative means to address future challenges, admitted that the DoD’s approach to software is broken, saying: “it takes too long, is too expensive, and exposes warfighters to unacceptable risk by delaying their access to tools they need to ensure mission success.”
For a while, it looked like Kessel Run would be the solution. Kessel Run has been widely recognized as “the gold standard of military tech done right” and a report released by the Defense Innovation Board claimed that Kessel Run “ha[s] demonstrated that the flexibilities exist within the existing system to develop, procure, deliver, and update software more quickly.” In other words, it looked like Kessel Run might solve the “it takes too long, is too expensive” problem.
But, while many outside of Kessel Run see the organization as an example of innovation within the DoD, our initial interviews with Kessel Run employees revealed many internal frustrations; including concerns about the hiring process, employee onboarding, technology development, programming practices, the build-it-yourself culture, and client acceptance. Kessel Run has shown that software can be delivered faster and better and it has done so by valuing continuous improvement. Many of the employee frustrations stem from the stagnation of this value, the concern that while Kessel Run is a significant improvement over the ‘norm’, this improvement cannot become the new standard.
photo: Danny Ragheb interviewing with a member of the Kessel Run team
Next Steps
These interviews, combined with observed growing pains, complicate Kessel Run’s claim to be a solution to the DoD’s broken software development process. But, for our team, this information is invaluable. We’ve been able to use these insights to identify Kessel Run’s major pain points and are excited to spend the rest of the semester brainstorming and prototyping solutions for cultural, technical, and operational challenges.
We have met with 31 Kessel Run and Department of Defense employees. Within this group, everyone we interviewed has a different perspective on what is no longer working and varying opinions on how to sustain the culture and mission that Kessel Run started with. Many of the Kessel Run employees we talked with warned us that it will be challenging for their teams to abandon existing structures and processes. Primarily because the organization operates within the largest bureaucratic institution in the world; but, also because scaling a small team into a thousand-person organization typically requires quickly adopting or discarding new structures to help manage the increased scale.
But, there is good news. Many of the employees we talked with are excited about finding solutions that will enable Kessel Run to scale into a reliable software development organization. Most importantly, they are committed to the work that they do and the Airmen they serve. And while opinions differ on how to solve Kessel Run’s growing pains, we have gotten consistent feedback about why employees choose Kessel Run as a place to work. They want to make a meaningful difference, and we’re honored to help them do so.
If you want to learn more, or have thoughts on our project, please contact us at innovategov.kesselrun@gmail.com.
Meet the Team
Lauren Lombardo is a first-year master in public policy student at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Daniel (Danny) Ragheb is a senior at Harvard College studying neurobiology, government, and psychology.
Kyle Witzigman is a first-year master in public policy student at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Carra Wu is a junior at Harvard College studying math, computer science, and economics