Boeing switched to Agile development for T-X program

Interesting that agile was a key component in what allowed Boeing to underbid all their competitors on the T-X advanced trainer program and still produce a profitable aircraft:

"Another factor was adopting an agile approach to software development. Instead of building up large blocks of software over several months or even years, the functions are broken down into smaller increments that are integrated at the system level every two months.

“This had us basically releasing software every eight weeks,” Niewald said. “By doing this in such a disciplined manner at a frequency it allowed us to reduce our software [lines of code] by 50% [compared to a traditional aircraft development program].”

The approach allowed Boeing to build and fly two aircraft within three years of the program launch in 2013. When this journalist referred to the two T-X aircraft built so far as “prototypes," implying they don’t represent the production standard, a Boeing spokesperson stepped in to point out that they are not considered prototypes internally"