A SureFire Success

Over 8000 man-made objects orbit Earth today, 3000 of them satellites. SpaceX's Starlink and Lockheed Martin's Space Fence will multiply that number. In this already congested environment, the Department of Defense (DoD) needed a way to safely send RF energy into space and communicate with their satellites with minimal risk of interfering with others. That's where we came in.

SureFire allows units worldwide to easily and quickly submit, track, and calculate RF deconfliction requests between mission partners. As founding Product Manager, I had to not only prioritize the unique mission needs between a dozen units and multiple user groups but also prove the viability of agile values and DevSecOps to a skeptical Air Force.

Our achievements:

Replaced email process and MS Word form with intuitive, centralized UI

Reduced average time spent submitting requests from 30 minutes to 5

Automated deconfliction analysis/calculation process

Eliminated three-day delay from request submission to calculation start

Deployed MVP to prod in 58 days

Maintained biweekly prod release cadence

Reached full user adoption in 8 months

About Section 31

Section 31 is an agile software development start-up under the Space and Missile Systems Center of the US Space Force. Its mission is to create a digital US Space Force where extraordinary software propels space dominance.

S31 is initially focused on modernizing our Space Domain Awareness (SDA) capabilities and deprecating legacy systems, but it will grow to encompass the greater SDA enterprise overtime. Above all else, we commit to continuously delivering impactful software that Space Operators love.

S31 is a Star Trek reference to an unacknowledged Starfleet Intelligence organization that allows "bending the rules" during times of extraordinary threats. They operate on the basis that extraordinary threates warrant extraordinary measures to accomplish the mission.

Check out my next project: Dowding