International high technology cooperation: lessons learned

In February 1986, in response to the Nunn Amendment in the United States, a special Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD) examined possible ways to foster cooperative high technology research and development programs within the NATO Alliance. As a result, they established the Special Working Group on Ada Programming Support Environments (SWG APSE) to oversee the development of a multinational software development environment for developing real-time weapon systems in the Ada programming language. The Working Group also developed a requirements specification for a software development environment interface standard. The author describes the benefits and pitfalls of this joint software development. He also describes the lessons learned from such joint multinational development efforts. Further, the author describes the management issues that are unique to such an international collaborative effort and gives a frank assessment of the techniques that had helped and hindered the program's progress.