Rise8 founder Bryon Kroger sat down with Chelsea Roberts on GovCon Unscripted to talk about Kessel Run, why "the cavalry isn't coming" on acquisition reform, and the one shift in language that would change how government teams ship software.
Rise8 founder and CEO Bryon Kroger joined Chelsea Roberts on GovCon Unscripted as part of her “Success After Service” series. The conversation covered Bryon’s path from Air Force intelligence officer to acquisitions, the rise and fall of Kessel Run, what’s broken about how government talks about MVPs today, and where Rise8 is putting its energy next.
Here are the biggest takeaways from their conversation:
Change behavior to change culture, not the other way around
Bryon’s framing for transformation borrows from the Toyota and GM joint venture in California (the “NUMMI” plant), where the same workers who’d been sabotaging vehicles became the highest-performing team in the country after working in Toyota plants for a few months.
The lesson he keeps coming back to: Don’t try to change thinking to change behavior. Change behavior to change thinking, and culture will follow.
He calls this the inverse NUMMI maneuver. In practice for government software, it means you don’t start by giving people a deck on Agile. You start by establishing continuous delivery (one line of code from a developer’s workstation to a war fighter’s hands) and let the new behavior reshape what people believe is possible.
“The cavalry isn’t coming” on policy reform
Every administration brings a wave of acquisition-reform optimism. Bryon’s been in the space for nearly two decades, and his read is blunt: the cavalry is never coming.
His point isn’t that policy doesn’t matter. It’s that the bottleneck almost never sits in the policy itself. It sits in the process and norms that have built up around it.
His example: when he started Kessel Run, he was warned that the Risk Management Framework (RMF) would block continuous delivery. He read the actual NIST documentation, found it well-written, and discovered the framework explicitly encouraged what he was trying to do. The policy supported it. The people defending the policy hadn’t read it.
Lesson for program offices: read the actual policy before you accept that it’s blocking you.
What actually killed Kessel Run
Bryon was direct about Kessel Run’s end. The Air Operations Center modernization effort he launched (later known as Credos) was officially killed on March 31. His take is unpopular among Kessel Run alumni:
“The lesson learned there, what we should walk away with, wasn't that Kessel Run failed, but the Air Force failed Kessel Run.”
What he saw happen:
- The bureaucracy came back for the program. It slowed deployments, blocked new infrastructure, and killed budget for product training.
- The travel budget got cut, severing the connection between developers and the operators they were building for.
- User-centered design collapsed, because contractors were no longer allowed direct access to end users.
- Deployment frequency dropped from multiple times a day to once a month, and at one point, not at all.
- Outcomes per deployment dropped too, because the feedback loop was gone.
The DORA metrics tell the rest of the story. At its peak, Kessel Run posted lead time, deployment frequency, MTTR, and change-fail rates that no other DoW program has matched.
The case for “net value release” over MVP
The Software Acquisition Pathway was supposed to fix how government buys and builds software. Bryon helped draft the original language and is largely supportive, with one exception.
The bureaucracy has quietly mapped MVP to IOC and MVCR (minimum viable capability release) to FOC. The result: program offices now show two and three-year timelines to “initial” delivery and call it innovation. Kessel Run’s first operational delivery to a classified network in theater happened on day 119.
His proposal: replace MVP with “net value release.”
Net value doesn’t mean every aspect of the release is positive. Early in a program, you might introduce a manual step where a user has to copy data from an old system into the new one. That’s fine, as long as the same release reduces their overall workflow by 70 to 80%. That’s a net win, and the user should have it now, not in three years.
The takeaway for government program leaders
If you lead a program and you want a different result, Bryon’s argument is that the work is structural, not rhetorical:
- Establish continuous delivery first. You won’t change culture in a meeting.
- Read the actual policy. Most of the “you can’t do that” is process, not law.
- Protect your connection to end users. The day you cut the travel budget is the day user-centered design dies.
- Stop calling three-year timelines “MVPs.” Ship net value as soon as it exists.
- Don’t wait for reform. The cavalry isn’t coming.
Want this kind of delivery inside your program?
Rise8 partners with government teams to ship outcomes in 180 days or less. Talk to Rise8.
Want to go deeper on the ideas in this episode?
Watch Bryon's free, educational Mission O/S course for shipping inside government.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Bryon Kroger?
Bryon Kroger is the founder and CEO of Rise8. He spent 10 years on active duty in the Air Force as an intelligence officer doing targeting operations, then moved into acquisitions and co-founded Kessel Run, one of the first and most successful software factories in the Department of War. He started Rise8 in 2018 to help other government organizations deliver software the way Kessel Run did at its peak.
What is Rise8?
Rise8 is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business that builds custom software for critical missions and helps government organizations continuously deliver valuable software users love. The company employs roughly 170 people, has been growing about 50% year over year, and is focused on Space Force, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other federal customers.
What is Kessel Run, and why did it end?
Kessel Run was the Air Force software factory Bryon Kroger helped launch, originally focused on modernizing the Air Operations Center weapon system. It set DoW benchmarks for deployment frequency and lead time. The core program (later called Credos) was officially ended. Bryon’s view is that Kessel Run didn’t fail. The Air Force failed Kessel Run by reintroducing bureaucracy that broke its deployment frequency and severed its connection to end users.
What does Bryon Kroger mean by “net value release”?
Net value release is Bryon’s proposed replacement for MVP language in the Software Acquisition Pathway. The idea is simple. If a release produces net positive value for the mission, even when some parts of it introduce friction (like a temporary manual step), release it. The goal is to stop treating MVP as a synonym for IOC (initial operational capability) and start shipping value as soon as it exists.
What is the Software Acquisition Pathway?
The Software Acquisition Pathway is a DoW acquisition framework codified through the NDAA that gives programs a software-specific path for requirements, contracting, and delivery. Bryon helped draft early language for it. He thinks the pathway opens real doors but warns that the bureaucracy has co-opted the language. By mapping MVP to IOC and MVCR to FOC, program offices end up running multi-year timelines and calling it innovation.
How fast did Kessel Run deliver software at its peak?
Kessel Run’s first operational delivery to a classified network supporting Warfighters in theater happened on day 119. At its peak, the program was deploying multiple times per day with DORA metrics (lead time, deployment frequency, mean time to restore, change-fail rate, and operational reliability) that no other DoW program has matched.
Want this kind of delivery inside your program?
Rise8 partners with government teams to ship outcomes in 180 days or less. Talk to Rise8.
Going deeper on the ideas in this episode?
Subscribe to Mission O/S for Bryon’s take on shipping inside government.
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