CONTR47@NOSC-TECR.ARPA (06/16/87)
1. I believe that the contractors skill at S/W reuse will provide him the most advantage at bid time. The Government is *very* considerate of price when awarding contracts. The contractors who are most skilled at reuse will win the most contracts while those who bid all new code in order to collect the higher fees will suffer. 2. My experience at a large DoD contractor was contrary to what is being told to Ed. It was *very* difficult to get add-on money to either CPFF or FFP contracts unless the Government was clearly getting additional value for the money. I have heard extreme examples of rip-offs during the Vietnam war but all the time I worked there it was not under war emergency conditions and the Government was a *tough* customer. 3. My personal opinion is to question the data being told to Ed by "management". My experience has been that administrative management doesn't always know what is going on; The program manager does but he wouldn't tell so unless you have some clout (like work for the Defense Contract Audit Agency) you are not going to know "the facts". The work I recently did on Ada cost modelling showed us that very few people really knew what was going on. Only by careful recall on the part of the development manager could he remember why certain costs were unusual values. It was the unusual values that caused him to recall that reuse played an *important* part in S/W actual costs. Since we have now come full circle back to the value of reuse I'll sign-off. regards, sam harbaugh ---------------------