Software Engineering Institute

March 13, 2025—Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has directed all Department of Defense (DoD) components to adopt the Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP) as “the preferred pathway for all software development components of business and weapons systems” in a March 6 memo. The SWP, issued in 2020, breaks from hardware-centric acquisition regulations and requires the use of modern software practices and tools to speed the delivery of software within the DoD. The SEI helped shape the policy and has worked with DoD programs to implement it, with the goal of accelerating delivery of capability to the warfighter. Secretary Hegseth’s directive signals the start of an accelerated uptake of the SWP throughout the Defense Department.

The memo acknowledged the centrality of software in fielded weapons and supporting systems. “lt is a top priority for DoD to reform its acquisition processes in order to acquire, deliver, and iterate on our weapon and business systems—including software—at speed and scale for our Warfighter,” it says.

The SEI contributed its expertise to the development of the SWP, which the DoD issued as Department of Defense Instruction 5000.87. The policy departed from decades of regulations geared toward hardware acquisition by encouraging modern software practices such as Agile and continuous deployment of capability. “The launch of the Software Acquisition Pathway in 2020 was revolutionary,” said Eileen Wrubel, technical director of software acquisition policy and practice at the SEI’s Software Solutions Division (SSD). “Taking software acquisition out of hardware-driven paradigms was necessary to unlock the DoD’s ability to deliver software-enabled capability at mission-relevant speed.”

Since the SWP’s issuance, SEI researchers have collaborated with DoD program teams and policy owners to effectively implement the pathway in different program contexts, identify barriers and challenges, and monitor outcomes. Programs adopting the SWP have greater flexibility, which enables them to speed up capability delivery and increase user value.

Last week’s memo aims to scale up such individual successes across the entire Defense Department to speed, streamline, and secure the development and delivery of software-driven mission capabilities, from the back office to the front lines. It encourages programs to maximize flexible options in the acquisition ecosystem and default to soliciting commercial solutions. The memo also limits DoD components’ implementation of more restrictive policies and guidance.

As more DoD programs implement the SWP, the SEI will continue to assist them and use the lessons learned to inform future policy refinement and the development of guidance and resources necessary to further accelerate and scale pathway adoption. SEI research has focused on scaling the software acquisition workforce, reducing the complexity of acquisition rules, and adapting acquisition practices to enable decisive action and accelerate the adoption of commercial and scientific innovations. The SEI’s unique role as a federally funded research and development center at the nexus of academia, industry, and government has helped to bridge the commercial and defense domains and prime the DoD for a broad and well-supported adoption of the SWP.

“I’m proud of the role the SEI has played in the launch and scaling of the pathway, through the integration of data-driven insights, software engineering research, and acquisition science,” said SEI SSD director Anita Carleton. “The recent memo poises the Defense Department to push the envelope further, and we’re excited to continue to help programs and policy owners achieve capability delivery at speed and scale.”

“Software is at the heart of so many crucial technologies in the Department of Defense,” said SEI director Paul Nielsen. “The adoption of the Software Acquisition Pathway demonstrates the broad impact and importance of our mission at the SEI, to make software a strategic advantage for national security.”

Learn more about the SEI’s impact on the SWP and our history of acquisition research in our Digital Library. There you can also discover more about the SEI’s research in improved methods for capability-based software cost estimation and automated cost estimation in a pipeline of pipelines, to further benefit programs using modern software engineering methods.