Let’s Talk Agile: The Future of Space Force Software Acquisition

Lieutenant Colonel Laila S. Barasha is the ACAT-1 Materiel Leader for Evolved Strategic SATCOM (ESS) Ground, developing Ground Resilient Integration & Framework for Operational Nuclear Command, Control, & Communications (NC3) (GRIFFON).  She has been a pioneer in the utilization of the Software Acquisition Pathway to deliver an innovative and resilient next-generation NC3 ground architecture. Lt Col Barasha transitioned from the Air Force to the Space Force in the summer of 2021. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado and AFROTC Det 105. She is a Developmental Engineer and Acquisitions officer. During her career, Lt Col Barasha served in a variety of assignments to include aircraft sustainment, missile warning and missile defense operations, Joint Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) ground (JOG) exploitation, and strategic and tactical military satellite communications. She has deployed OCONUS in an International Affairs and Theater Security Cooperation role.

Dr. Supannika (Sue) Mobasser is a Senior Project Leader the Aerospace Corporation, where she leads agile adoption and leverages agile acquisition strategies to support Aerospace customers on a national scale. During her tenure at Aerospace, she has supported a broad spectrum of Air Force, commercial, and internal Aerospace customers, in varied areas as pre-acquisition planning to the application of Agile software development approaches and practices. She is a certified Scrum Master, Scrum Product Owner, SAFe 4.5 Agilist, SAFe 4.5 DevOps Practitioner, SAFe 5.0 Government Practitioner, and SAFe 5.0 Product Owner/ Product Manager. Prior to joining Aerospace, she was a researcher and a lecturer at the University of Southern California Center for Systems and Software Engineering and a software engineering intern and a RUP/OpenUp Content Developer at IBM Software Group.