Industry Insights Blog Series
Defense contracts are often fixed-cost, with rigid deadlines and zero room for error. Program managers who undertake these contracts commit their teams to delivering complex systems while navigating stringent safety certification requirements and security constraints.
The difference between successful defense projects and those that struggle typically comes down to an effective quality assurance strategy. Teams that can prevent problems early, rather than only discovering them late in development, consistently outperform their peers.
Four Challenges that Must Be Addressed in Software Development on Defense Programs
1. Managing the Impact of Safety Requirements
What is it about: Safety certifications, like DO-178C, have test coverage requirements that introduce major schedule and budget risks to defense programs. Manual effort to achieve the necessary coverage consumes vast engineering resources, while the process generates voluminous documentation that must withstand scrutiny from auditors.
How to fix it: Selected code coverage tools like Coco provide objective and traceable evidence and include support for advanced yet commonly required coverage levels: Statement Block, Branch, and Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC). UI test automation tools, like Squish, can efficiently drive this coverage toward completeness and identify dead code for removal. Both tools include Tool Qualification Kits for a range of safety standards. This includes qualification for DO-330, which enables their use on programs subject to DO-178C and DO-278A requirements.
The outcome: Program managers achieve shorter and more predictable certification timelines. Engineers identify uncovered code paths earlier in development, when remediation costs are significantly lower. The entire audit process becomes more systematic and less dependent on last-minute documentation efforts.
2. Multi-Platform Testing Can Be Chaotic
What is it about: Defense systems use diverse operating platforms—Linux, VxWorks, INTEGRITY, and other proprietary real-time operating systems—often with legacy Java applications in the mix. Manual testing across this heterogeneous landscape is impractical, while many automated tools cannot be used in the secure, offline environments where defense teams work.
How to fix it: Squish supports automated testing across this diverse ecosystem by separating the test management host from its lightweight counterpart for test execution on target. The on-target component may be built from the source to run in most embedded environments. Unlike strictly image-based tools, Squish takes an object-based approach to test development that is resilient to interface changes. It functions fully offline and meets requirements for use on secure networks.
The outcome: Integration issues surface earlier in the development cycle. Test automation that works reliably across all system components provides concrete evidence of stability throughout development, which is critical for demonstrating progress in defense contract reviews.
3. Stopping the Silent Erosion of System Architecture and Code Quality
What is it about: Defense programs can span decades. As requirements evolve and teams change, architectural discipline gradually erodes. Even systems with clean code at the component level can become structurally compromised over time, leading to increased maintenance costs, reduced flexibility, and compliance risks and issues.
How to fix it: Axivion offers architecture verification capabilities that compare implementation against design intent, flagging structural violations before they become established. Beyond standard static analysis, Axivion provides Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) security checks and supports fully customizable coding standards tailored to specific program requirements.
The outcome: Systems maintain their architectural integrity and code quality over their operational lifespan. Teams catch structural and code-level issues before they evolve into maintenance and compliance problems, reducing the risk of costly rework, system crashes, and product recalls after the system has been deployed.
4. Turn Raw Test Data into Actions
What is it about: As automated testing scales across various builds, targets, and configurations, the test data volume becomes overwhelming. Basic pass/fail metrics provide limited insight into where to focus the quality improvement efforts.
How to fix it: Test Center aggregates results from various test sources (Squish test runs and Coco coverage reports) to reveal meaningful patterns. Teams can track execution history across different configurations, identify unstable tests, and locate areas with recurring failures or declining coverage.
The outcome: Quality assurance resources focus on the highest-risk components based on empirical data rather than intuition. This systematic approach identifies root causes more efficiently to eliminate classes of defects, rather than just individual symptoms.
Focus efforts where you struggle most. Use what you've learned so far to guide the next steps with intention and insight.
Test Automation Strategies
Beyond Individual Tools: A QA Strategy for High Standards
These capabilities form a comprehensive approach to quality that addresses the unique demands of defense contracts:
- Paired code coverage analysis and automated testing to efficiently meet program contractual and quality requirements
- Adaptable tooling to support testing across diverse targets, including embedded hardware and real-time operating systems
- Unique static analysis capabilities paired with architecture verification, to maintain software integrity and compliance throughout system development
- Centralized results management to track and understand progress toward program objectives over time
For programs managing complex procurement processes, Qt Group's integrated toolchain offers a single-vendor solution designed specifically for restricted, security-conscious environments.
Winning Fixed-Price Contracts Through Proven Quality
In defense contracting, quality assurance shouldn't be merely about compliance; it should also provide concrete evidence that builds confidence in your ability to deliver on promises.
Program managers benefit from reduced certification time and earlier defect detection. Technical leads gain reliable testing across diverse platforms and automated standards enforcement. Engineering teams spend less time on manual validation and more time on innovation.
Most significantly, fixed-price proposals become more credible because they're supported by demonstrable quality processes rather than assumptions.
In short, choosing Qt Group means moving beyond "good enough" tools from multiple suppliers and adopting a single-vendor solution designed from day one to meet the defense industry's contractual rigor and mission-critical demands.
Next Steps
If your team faces compliance and certification challenges or needs to improve quality testing for complex embedded systems in secure environments, contact our team to discuss your specific and unique project requirements.
