FACE® Consortium Business Guide v3

e e e good morning afternoon evening everyone depending upon where you are in the world and welcome to this latest in uh the series of open group technical uh webinars today we're looking at the face business guide version 3.1 before we get started today however I'll just take you for a couple of issues in terms of how you use the WebEx platform if you're not used to it uh we have a couple of means uh whereby you can communicate with yourselves each other and the presenters today the first of these is the chat Channel now if you look to the lower right hand corner of your screen you'll see a little speech bubble if you click on that that opens up the chat Channel um I'd ask you to use that channel to communicate with with each other to to talk about whatever tell us where you're you're calling in from um just use that as a general social networking Communications Channel however if you wish to ask questions of the presenters during the WebEx today then please do not put those questions in the chat Channel because there's a lot of other stuff that goes into that Channel please can you use the Q&A Channel now to find the Q&A Channel if you look to the right hand side of the chat Channel speech bubble you'll see another circle with three dots in a horizontal row if you click on that that opens up some other options and within that there's a Q&A channel can I ask you please to use the Q&A Channel only to send in questions to the presenters today and when you send those questions in can you make them to all panelists so that everybody can see those questions and the presenters will be able to see what's coming in uh we will not deal with those questions as they're sent in today we will deal with those questions at the end of the webinar so please uh bear with us but after the presentation we'll have time for Q&A and we'll cover the questions that come in come in during the Q&A Channel okay so uh it's just leaves me to hand over to the presenters today I'd like to introduce you to uh Jason York Jason is uh the face bwg chair and he's senior associate of strategic Ventures Consulting Group and also Alex Redi who is the face bwg Vice chair principal software engineer for Sierra Nevada Corporation so gentlemen if I'd ask you please come on video and uh go ahead with the presentation thank you very much great welcome everyone thanks for joining and John can you make me the presenter so I can advance the slide please actually you are already Alex okay my bad I clicked the wrong button sorry guys so uh well uh my name is Alex Ray and it's my honor and privilege to be the bwg that stands for business working group Vice chair that means um Jason and I serve the Consortium in uh you know looking at all the business related uh objectives that the Consortium has and trying to help guide the Consortium uh to uh improve in those regards so a little bit about me is I'm a principal engineer at snc uh but before then I got my bachelor's Master's and PhD in computer science I did my dissertation on the F18 hit and the acrobatic Maneuvers that they do so it's kind of a Aviation software kind of blend there and um and then after that I moved into Academia where I was a professor at CMU Central Michigan University uh where I formed the max lab Michigan aviation center for simulations where we basically worked on AI and try and imitate all the cool things that you guys already do in the military because we admire you guys so much I do anyway and I was just imitation is the largest form of flattery it said and literally we're just trying to build models that imitate all the Maneuvers and pilotage that you guys already do on a daily basis um so uh that's a little bit about me I'm really looking forward some good good discussions today thanks again for joining good morning I'm H Jason York uh I support peo Aviation um I I I won't read through my you know my bio um just just to quickly uh you know recap by early uh career and education I was a software developer I know that scares some people uh because I I moved into the business side you know quite a few years ago um I like I said I support peo Aviation we do a good bit of uh Outreach tracking uh mosa and open system architecture guide and help our project offices and our um uh product offices you know address that guidance and and a big piece of that is the uh the face technical standard and we're going to talk to you about that today all right uh the business working group uh Alex and I recently put forward and had the face steering committee approve a char Char so here is our latest Charter uh you'll notice it's kind of broken into three pieces develop and communicate acquisition guidance Define policy and roles and responsibilities of the face conformance program and then as everybody has a charter to do inside the face Consortium Pro promote the adoption of the face approach here's some activities that we do we as Alex mentioned uh we work with other working groups and standing committees as a key business state stakeholder uh we convene our source our uh configuration control board and participate in others as necessary and then we oversee our subcommittees and and I'll present those next chart please here are our subcommittees and uh as you as you probably uh noticed we had our bwg Charter in three pieces these map directly to our subcommittees that we have uh at the top is alphabetically is acquisition guidance um the three products uh the documents that they produce is the business guide that we're going to talk about today the face contract guide and we'll give a quick advertisement uh in the near future probably four or six weeks out uh somewhere in that time frame we're going to do a webinar on the face contract guide version 3.1 and then we are working on the program manager getting started guide and that that intent is to address the three acquisition support gaps and the IP considerations that that's you know kind kind of lacking um you know right now obviously the business guide is a very valuable resource the contract guide is a resource but we feel like there's three additional areas helping them uh formulate their acquisition strategy help them defend open architecture requirements during execution and then obviously very important and the the majority of the cost help and offer some guidance in sustainment area um the next uh subcommittee is conformance policy this is a very active uh subcommittee we we just recently reformed that if you notice they've got quite a lot of responsibilities uh we have um um roles in the uh conformance program and we really focus on the roles and resp responsibilities and kind of operation the twg you know they really handle the technical aspects and we handle a lot more of the agreements and the uh and the roles and making sure that we've got those clearly defined and then our Outreach subcommittee has been um an an established subcommittee for many many years in the working group and they are developing a face marketing plan uh I know we just completed a review for that and uh that that will be an internal document to really promote the face Consortium members as ambassadors to do Outreach and uh get get information about the face approach out there next chart So today we're going to focus and we're going to talk about the face business guide version 3.1 the subtitle is provides guidance and value proposition and business case for the face approach in a nutshell this is a marketing tool this is a marketing tool intended for executives both on the government side and Industry side to share information about the face approach and why it is valuable not not only the industry but but the government uh this is freely Avail available uh through the open group uh publication site there's a link at the bottom and the topics that we're going to cover today and Alex is doing the heavy lifting here he he is going to cover the bulk of these topics you know the face approach and and most of principles the common misconceptions and then he's going to cover the value to Industry and then I'll jump back in and cover the value to the government next slide perfect so I'll cover this so um the we're going to talk a little bit about the face approach I'm going to highlight the two key goals that the face approach contains and then we'll get into some more details in later slides so historically embeded Aviation software systems have been developed procured and implemented with platform specific designs and that results in typy coupled systems with unique enclosed interfaces that inhibit crossplatform reuse and adversely affect interoperability between those systems AKA what we describe as vendor lock and it's a huge problem that costs the government a lot of money and they want a solution to that they want to to avoid that they want to have a competitive marketplace where not just the original equipment manufacturer can support the enduring flea and so face is not necessarily the one and only answer to that but it is a very solid approach uh to towards breaking vendor lock um the face approach has two specific goals increase the affordability of capabilities and improve time to field um to the war fighter so specifically uh in order to achieve those two goals it's not just technical there are also business objectives so the phase approach is defined as an approach that promotes software portability and reuse that is comprised of business processes technical practices and open software standards um and the uh all three of those ingredients are kind of are are absolutely needed uh in order to create an environment where you are eliminating or at least reducing that vendor lock problem so uh with that said uh we'll get into mosa uh so want to uh so first I'll Define what mosa and face means uh for those of you who may not know so face is future Airborne capability environment it is a framework essentially for Aviation software mosa is much larger so view mosa as this big circle face would be a nugget within the larger Circle mosa is modular open systems approach um it was uh in it's be it's it's it's a requirement it's a program requirement Jason will talk about more that more of the more about that later uh but there are five principles to Mosa that you should know um they are Ena establishing an enabling environment employing modular design uh designating key interfaces using Open Standards and then finally having some sort of conformant certification um and the face approach uh has all five of those we have a conformance program we utilize many different Open Standards I I can't even you see it says 60 I I've read through the document I can't even count so I guess there's at least 60 uh o other Open Standards reference within the face standard um we designate K interfaces through the system segments uh we employ modular design uh which is talked a little bit about in the air worthiness guide and we establish an air enabling environment which is the CE part of face Computing environment uh so really what this slide is here to show you is that mosa is it's not optional it's a requirement mosa is this huge uh thing it has these five principles these five principles aren't necessarily super specific and actionable uh to you as the government or to you as the industry integrator but face is face has specific requirements that you can execute on it's a smaller fulfillment of the larger m of principle all right uh so next slide uh we just want to uh talk about some common misconceptions uh because I'm sure you've heard of face before but uh may not know exact ly what face uh well we just want to eliminate some common misconceptions so I'm going to go into three in detail there are six here but uh I think we'll just talk about three in a little bit DET a little bit higher detail so uh the first is that all platform software has to be face conformant uh that's not true the face conformance program is actually kind of like a spectrum where at the very end you can claim face conformance but uh there are um you know there are stages that you achieve there are little Milestones that you achieve until you have that full face conformance so no not all platform software has to be face conformant uh second is requires that the face approach requires unlimited data rights um this is not true um if you were to look at the uh the way that uh the conformance program works is one of the Milestones is the CTS the conformance test suite and that does not require a specific data right strategy um instead it allows you as the uh developer or the vendor the integrator or whatever it is the widget that you're developing um you can maintain rights and tweak and dial in the level of data rights that you're going to share with the government and the tools that we already have in the Computing environment in face uh will allow you to do that uh the next misconception is that it only applies to Future systems um that's no that's uh part of the breaking V breaking vendor lock is uh applicable to more than just future systems um the next common misconception is that it guarantees or it prevents airworthiness qualification face is not really doing anything there it's very limited in what it does for you in airworthiness and if you want more details about that please check out the airworthiness guide uh they have a new version actually that we're uh releasing the Consortium is releasing here pretty shortly but the summary of the current guide is this uh uh do 178 has requirements that you're a ation platform do certain things like you have to have a defined architecture um you have to do like worse case execution time analysis face is not doing any of those things for you what face will do is you can site face as a rigorous architecture that you've applied in your Aviation platform it's not going to you know satisfy all the other things that d178 requires of you for airworthiness so um that's a common misconception be aware of that so their their air worthiness is a huge topic and face is not preventing or guaranteeing that you get qualified um uh next bullet point is that it ensures or inhibits performance um we've done our best to uh use uh best practices in code development and software development in face but it's ultimately up to you it's up to me as the integrator to uh actually execute on those engineering best practices and follow them through face isn't going to compel you to any performance metric uh and then finally that it's cost and schedule prohibitive and that's more of a government bullet point I guess it's both government industry but um the the counterargument here is if you if you build a software modularly uh it it may take you more time at the beginning but it'll save you more time by the time by the end because if you build it cheaply and quality is low then the rework costs will be extremely high and everyone knows in software especially Aviation software want something certified the rework costs are incredibly high so it's better to do it right the first time therefore it's not necessarily cost and schedule prohibitive uh because we're not seeing the costs that we're saving at the End by um employing a modular approach in the beginning so all right and then my final slide here is the Val I'm going to discuss here the face approach and its value to Industry um so there are three kind of categories that the business guide divides this into uh so the first is customer requirements uh where we're reinforcing what we said before where face is fulfilling uh mosa requirements it's it's you know fulfilling the five requirements of mosa um it supports the government's goal to achieve mosa principles that's that's law now and facilitates Rapid technology insertion and aligns with customer products and road maps uh the second is regarding revenue and market share so we have something uh called the face registry where when you become fully face conformant you can add yourself to this public face registry and advertise your product that it's a fully face conformant uh uoc or unit unit of conformance that's the way we denote our uh units of software in face um and that is a potential new market for you as as an industry as as someone in Industry so that is a way to grow your business um and then finally productivity and profit um you're increasing your value you're increasing your value to your your stakeholders primarily the government uh by fulfilling their mosa requirements number one uh and then number two uh by making it if you go through the full conformance program and uh get added to the registry you're making it incredibly obvious to other people who might integrate your software as a vendor that you are you've gone through the process uh and uh you've been vetted by a third party so um yeah those are the three values to Industry um I'm going to hand it over to Jason now who's going to talk in more detail about the value to government thank you Alex and that that was a terrific rundown on on some some pretty heavy topics so excellent job uh want to talk a little bit about the value to the government and this uh this first one here policies and mandates I could probably drop anchor and talk about this for for two hours uh but I I'll keep it at a very high level so the the government is um it has to follow title 10an that that is acquisition um you know guidance that's that's part of law uh for the armed services so when you hear us talk about the National Defense authorization acts you know EV every year Congress passes you know these acts and it has certain aspects of it and last several years there's been you know a good bit um of guidance and and mosa 15 pretty much it said uh mosa is coming and the ndaa for 17 it made it for major weapon systems and then the ndaa for 21 it it's kind of groundbreaking uh it extended it to modular systems and modular system interfaces so and also had requirements for program Executive offices and program managers that program managers have to specify the government desired modularity either in their acquisition strategy or referenced and their acquisition strategy so we are seeing this shift um you know with with mosa um one of the things that mosa is so important and the a in mosa is approach we want to follow an approach to realize an open architecture specifically an open systems architecture because that is kind of the the center kind of the key piece to promote competition to prevent vendor lock and then help programs meet their objectives so for for the government mosa is so important and and the face approach the face technical standard the ud udl standard um if you notice the definition of face approach it says software standards plural we H we have two of them sometimes udl kind of get short chain but but that's that's also a standard that that we use uh open free freely available so as you see the policies and mandates that we have to follow face really helps us on the on the software side you know for sure and it really extends Beyond Aviation um I've I've told people over the years we probably need to to figure out a way to drop the F because it's not future it's here it's now and it's not restricted just to Aviation uh we've seen it in many domains ground ground vehicles um the oil industry oil refinery automotive industry you name it it's a it's a good uh software reference architecture with a very robust uh ecosystem so this is a a true asset that the government uses we put face requirements um you know on in solicitations on uh you know contracts that that we're you know seeking those products the uoc's from industry um we have limited time and we have limited money that's why affordability is is so key for us so if you condition the input and you have uh modular components and you have open interfaces we get the benefit on the backside in sustainment which you know some Studies have shown is over 90% of the cost you know in in programs so we're we're trying to get out in front of it uh early in the acquisition process where we can reap the benefits on the backside the threats that our war Fighters are facing they're they're evolving uh on a daily basis so we have to speed our time to to field and this you know reusability and the infrastructure that we're putting in place you know with the face approach and and the peace Parts align with what the government you know needs to do it um we we want to have new and Innovative capabilities and this goes hand inand with preventing vendor lock and really empowering uh the software marketplace where smaller uh software suppliers can participate and and we um we we make this effort and and try to do that not only through the face approach but on the government side and and a lot of the uh policy guidance and law that's came out because we want Enterprise Solutions we don't want to buy you know a capability for Apache and a capability you know for uas and uh for Flora um and integrate those in independently we want to buy one capability that we can reuse across the Enterprise and is the aduring fleet like Apache and Blackhawk and and shinook you know um we have obsolescence issues we have that uh Strate rically developed you know capability that we can achieve strategic reuse on to really help in obsolescence and drive down the cost so this has tremendous value uh to to the government and and we really uh embrace the face approach and because it it's so well aligned to Mosa and the law that we have to follow next slide okay uh that that was uh you know a pretty high level pretty quick overview uh thank y'all for attending and I think we'll open it up uh for questions now thank you Jason and thank you Alex um yeah we've had a few questions come in um so we'll just start at the top here um does face compliance infer mosa compliance who wants to take that one so it it's it's really conformance so um that that's when when we refer to you know face we talk about face conformance and the you know the title 10 language that principle number five certify conformance so it's really conformance instead of uh compliance uh the the answer is partially so obviously the government um has a broader scope as as Alex mentioned you know mo mosa is is much larger but in the soft domain face really helps um the government achieve those five principles uh in in in that scope so um hopefully that that addressed the question thank you Jason yeah if I could add something here and thanks thanks for the question Larry so uh uh So within if here's here's what I recommend uh you go take a look at so there's something called the face segment diagram where outlines all the different phase segments like operating system Transport Services platform specific uh platform component um even within that diagram describing all of the face ecosystem it still shows that there are things that will exist in software that's outside of that face ecosystem so uh highlighting what Jason said face is a wonderful tool that is guiding your organization towards mosa compliance and it within it itself as a Computing environment does fulfill all fosa requirements but just because your face conform it may not necessarily mean that all your software is you know complying with the five principles of mosa so I don't know if that makes sense if that helps but there are things that exist that outside your face Computing environment that you know that also have to be looked at thanks for the question thanks Alex um okay next question also from Larry actually uh metrics are there any metrics on program success and risk reduction with face versus programs not employing face yeah Larry thank you for that question um and and um glad uh you're attended today I I know Larry supports MDA missile defense agency so um you know very excited to continue the discussion you know with you on this you specifically ask about metric so we are looking at mosa metrics uh which which is diff which is difficult uh a lot of times you know metrics in them in themselves are difficult but the uh the large scope uh of mosa to get metrics that are quantifiable actionable and and beneficial so I'm I'm try I'm trying to lead that effort in our group at you know peo Aviation um got some ideas um so so as far as metrics specifically uh for you know face conformance software versus not face you know um conformant software I I will tell you and um obviously this is a you know kind of a very short webinar but you can have face software running on the same partition uh running on the same system as nonface software and in actuality I'm I'm going to say this and I I will I will make sure I'm not talking about forward and backwards uh compatibility but you can have different software developed for different additions of the face technical standard running on the same system so um and we're really we're really focused on high value software intended for reuse when we talk about the face approach and not all software kind of fits in that bucket you may have you platform specific that that you're only going to use it for this system and and this configuration well that's probably not a good candidate to be um you know face conformant you could you could do that but we have on the te on the technical side we have the ability to to mix face conformant software and and nonface software and I know I've kind of skirted your metrics question but I I'll be happy to engage with you uh in more more details later I'd like to add to that a little bit and thanks for the question uh Larry so uh there's a government accountability office report 20 released in 2023 called the weapon system annual assessment it may have come from your department it sounds like you work in weapon systems and I uh a colleague and I read that report and what I thought was interesting about it was that it cited three key challenges and I these don't have to do with face I'm going to broaden your question a little bit to Mosa and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about face but I want to read to you literally word for word what it said here so it says uh programs that reported implementing uh Osa as a modular open systems approach cited challenges such as integrating systems into a mosa that were not developed using aosa okay so things outside of the Computing environment that weren't developed to be modular had to be integrated in modular system finding sufficient resources to devote to planning for which systems should be modular okay so it's an investment that was not necessarily the expectation of the people that were there right back to Jason's Point um anytime we do something modular any time we want to do something right you want to build a house right you got to you know it's an investment you think about the design a little bit more you're not just throwing up the cheapest materials you can find you're thinking about quality you're thinking about the endurance of that home uh you know know it takes longer it costs more up front but it saves you more of the long run in the repairs and then finally the third bullet point from the government accountability office was obtaining sufficient documentation from contractors to allow the work uh with new vendors in the future which is kind of the vendor lock problem um so here's how I view that uh government accountability uh office's report so mosa is Law and we have to do it uh face is not law but fa is satisfying the five principles of mosa do we have any specific metrics for face no because the reason why is we're not going to see metrics on the first program the first program that you you know that you turn that you that where you take your existing uh software component and uh make it face conformant is going to be expensive it it's expensive to uh build things in a modular way it's expensive to conform with all the requirements of face up front but but uh down the road the idea is now you have a new iteration you have a new version of you know the Huey or whatever and that now maintaining upgrading or taking that capability and porting it is now cheaper because it's within the Computing environment that's been uh very well thought out by this Consortium so um to Circle back to your question we don't have good metrics right now on success and risk reduction with face because the thing is you're not going to see it on a on a number on platform number one we're going to see the benefits over platform 2 3 4 five that's when we'll really see the payoff and it's a long game here but it's uh it's one worth doing it's it's one that's really kind of law now with mosa so I hope that answered your question thanks Alex um we have another question for lar before we move on to to final question are there any programs in the missile or air defense domain using face so I I can give a little bit of insight to that I know uh peo missiles in space uh you know head headquartered At Redstone Arsenal here in Huntsville they have looked at it they are they are interested in it they are also interested in Sosa system open systems approach which um you know utilizes um face for the software piece um I know uh Colonel Tate he is PM stair I met with him about a year ago and uh weal we talked about face and and Sosa and he was interested in in getting involved in that I haven't followed back up with his office and and see how much progress they they make there uh but in in the discussions you know I had with him and and folks in his office they definitely see the value and they understand this is a great uh reference software uh software reference architecture that that they can use and it it is applicable to the to missile defense thanks Jason let me just clarify that that's the sensor open systems architecture which is a different consortial um but obviously it links in a lot with face and you guys sort of meet together as well um people from both of those consortia um Alex I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that if not I'll move on to the next question okay thank you I have nothing to add to that one okay um Gerald was put in a couple of questions here whether you they're linked or not we you can figure it out but um first one is is face uh used outside of the US um and uh he also adds how different from the other software from the other Frameworks like cmmi wherein software development has been popular so how different I guess is face from other Frameworks I can I can oh sorry go for it Jason oh Alex I was gonna say I can kind of take the first part of that question if you want to take the second part of that question so uh we we do know that the face Consortium is open to International um Li limited to five countries and we have participation especially from the UK um I have a little bit of insight many years ago we had some science and technology programs uh the US was bringing uh the face reference architecture uh different countries uh were bringing other architectures we we got together we did uh you know some case studies we did some you know demonstrations um there there was a lot of you know cross talk um I haven't followed up with them in recent years but I do know there was interest uh you know several years ago and um we do we do have some International participation in the Consortium hi Gerald thanks for the question uh I want to add to Jason's thing just so we know uh just so you have a little more context sorry uh so beginning of 2023 I think it was elect it was like voted in the end of 2022 but it became effective at beginning of 2023 uh it's the Canada US UK and Australia I think are all allowed to be face members um so and we have had participation at our face-to-face events from in we've had International participation I've met my Canadian counterparts I've met people from the UK um who are you know their their kind of approach is called pyramid and they've talked about face and uh so just to reinforce a little bit about what Jason was saying earlier I uh we we we don't have super great visibility internationally uh we are very us focused um but uh we we definitely are interacting with our International counterparts um to answer the second part of your question so you asked uh how is face different from the other Frameworks like cmmi wherein software development has been made popular uh so cmmi is capability maturity model integration and it's basically a uh well I I guess I'll just summarize it like this cmmi is very much about modeling like in Cameo uh of your process Bas is we do have a modeling component so we are very similar to cmmi in that way but we're more than that so for example if you were to look at the face segment diagram uh we describe how messages are flowing through the transport service segment to different other segments how we would interface through a sensor through the iio services segment um so we're doing more than and then we're specifying on The Wire protocols and um things more detailed things than necessarily kind of like the large scale models so I don't know if that answers your question but that's kind of how face is different we have models like cmmi but we also use those 60 other standards um so it's a lot broader in that sense and uh yeah I hope that answers your question great thank you Alex just clarification on that the so the consultive membership is um limited to the inl 5 person which is Australia Canada in New Zealand UK and the US so um okay thank you oh just New Zealand yeah sorry new um last minute questions come in here um oh it's actually a comment from Alicia I believe the UK mud is releasing a paper that shows the relationship between the TS and pyramid Bas Consortium has a number of member organizations that develop products with both pyramid and face requirement so that's just uh further information there okay um thank you Jason thank you Alex uh just so that everybody knows this session has been recorded we will make the recording and slide deck available to all registered attendees uh that should be in the open group library from early of next week either Monday or Tuesday of next week so thank you both and thank you everyone for uh uh logging into this this webinar today I appreciate your time and appreciate your presentations guys thank you e