UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
COLT WHITTALL TITLE : CHIEF EXPERIENCE OFFICER INDUSTRY : MILITARY LOCATION : ATLANTA
by how much tension there is between the DoD services . It ’ s just not healthy . I ’ m pretty sure we ’ re not the enemy here .
“ So we have to break that and reuse code and adopt more open-source applications and really have that baked-in security and continuous delivery of software multiple times a day . Right now the thought we can release software 21 times a day is pretty cool – for the government . But at Google or Netflix or Tesla or whatever , that ’ s not good enough . We need to go to even higher numbers . If you look at the teams moving to DevSecOps right now it ’ s maybe five or 10 percent of what they do . We need to move the needle to 80 or 90 percent .”
“CONSISTENT USER FEEDBACK WOULD BE A GAME CHANGER ”
COLT WHITTALL CXO , US AIR FORCE
EXECUTIVE BIO
Colt Whittall is obsessed with design . His background in digital agencies , designing and building visual products and services for the private sector companies was interspersed with stints of work for government bodies , including the US Air Force . In the 1990s , he joined Deloitte , eventually building a digital agency that broke away from the consultancy . “ After that ran its course I was ready to do something else ,” Whittall recalls . He loaded up the family car for a ‘ gap year ’ while he thought about his next move .
That move turned out to be with the US Air Force , where Whittall is the organization ’ s first CXO . “ My job is to delight the customer . If you go into the commercial world that ’ s what they talk about . We are most definitely not a consumer products and services company . We need a different bar , one that is about efficiency , about a war fighter , one that is orientated towards the mission that we have for our software and its application . Let ’ s make our airmen productive , efficient and effective .”