Lessons from Operation Absolute Resolve for Software Developers

While the raid on January 3, 2026, was brief, it was preceded by several months of careful joint planning, including rehearsals at replica sites and extensive agency and branch-level coordination before anyone ever lifted off in a helicopter. 

The purpose of this brief ‘raid’ was to capture Nicolás Maduro as part of Operation Absolute Resolve. The result was an impressive demonstration of speed and precision. The procurement in timelessness of outsourcing software development is very similar to carrying out a ‘raid’ like the one conducted by the joint forces. There is a minimal and visible window of opportunity for execution. 

However, there is also a lengthy and largely invisible period of time beforehand, during which discovery, risk assessment, and consensus building take place. The “real magic” has taken place during the long, drawn-out periods of consideration, debate, and discussion among small groups with a shared vision.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Understand that when an organization is run in a disciplined manner and follows proper strategies,  is prepared for any raid.
• Proper planning shortens arguments during planning, reduces thrash, and focuses on work.
• The mantra is to keep communication lines short, invest in discovery and documentation, and refine the playbook.

What The Raid Teaches About Preparation

Operation Absolute Resolve was not only a demonstration of firepower. It was an indication of logistics, alignment, and patience. With forces moved quietly into position, public accounts describe months of build-up, supply lines readied, and intelligence teams refining a shared picture of routes, timings, and likely failure points. The mission looked fast as the planning window was long and disciplined.

Software leaders often want the final sprint to carry that same feeling of momentum. Yet many still skip the hard parts of preparation. Dependencies are guessed at, requirements are vague, and risks are pushed into “later.” When the two-week sprint starts, the team is still finding the building it is meant to enter.

A more careful model treats the initial months of a partnership as reconnaissance. Internal stakeholders state constraints, intent, and unacceptable failure modes. The external team asks plain queries until the answers are specific. This is slow work, and it should be. It is the phase where confidence is built and where both sides learn what the other actually means by “done,” “secure,” or “ready for production.”

Deloitte’s recent Global Business Services Survey notes that most leading enterprises already rely on a blend of shared services and external partners for complex digital operations. While allowing specialized partners to run disciplined, the organizations that report the best results keep strategic control inside, repeatable delivery in defined areas. That pattern depends on long weeks of planning, not on heroic firefights inside every sprint.

Turning Long Preparation Into Two-Week Sprints

The appeal of a two-week sprint is already apparent. It is long enough to finish a meaningful slice of work, short enough to reduce risk, and frequent enough to keep leaders informed. Problems arise when teams treat the sprint as the place where all the learning will happen. A sprint that involves both exploration and execution seldom stays small.

When outsourcing software development, the preparation moment should explicitly protect the sprint. A mixed team can work through a set of grounding questions before any backlog is pulled into a board:

• Which user journeys are truly vital, and what does a bad day look like for those users?
• Which integrations or data flows are delicate, and how will the team observe them in real time?
• What constraints around compliance, security, or performance cannot be broken even in an experiment?
• Where is technical debt acceptable in the next six months, and where is it not?

Once these questions have real replies, the two-week sprint can stay narrow. The team is not trying to guess what matters while also formulating code. It already knows where the objective can bend and where it must not break. That shortens arguments during planning, reduces thrash, and keeps attention on the work that actually changes the product.

This is where an experienced partner such as N-iX is often most indispensable. External teams bring patterns learned from many previous engagements: how to stage rollouts safely, how to structure observability from day one, how to define “ready” in a way that keeps later sprints from stalling. Internal staff contribute profound context about users, history, and politics. Together, they can treat each sprint as a strategic maneuver, not as a fresh guess.

Where Outsourcing Partners Fit In The “30-Minute Raid” Mindset

The global market for outsourced services has shifted. Cost still matters, but it is no longer the only reason to bring in external teams. Organizations now look for risk control, reliable delivery, and access to skills that are challenging to hire locally. Auxis’s review of IT outsourcing trends notes that spending on outsourcing as a share of IT operating budgets rose by 45% between 2022 and 2023, a prominent sign of that change.

Outsourcing software development works best when the relationship resembles the structure of Operation Absolute Resolve, instead of a loose set of tickets thrown over a wall. There is a narrow internal circle that shares sensitive context. In fact, clear objectives are written in business terms rather than technical shorthand. There are rehearsals, where the team tests failover tactics, migration paths, and rollback plans in safe environments.

Industry lists such as IAOP’s 2025 Global Outsourcing 100 Sub-Lists underline that top-ranked providers tend to stand out through discipline rather than slogans. To ensure that every engagement builds on the lessons learned from the previous one, they make investments in documentation and discovery, maintain brief lines of communication, and improve playbooks. That same discipline is what turns a two-week sprint into a calm, repeatable move instead of a gamble.

For buyers, this mindset has practical implications. Vendor selection should look past rate cards and general claims. It should test how a partner handles the boring parts: risk registers, stakeholder mapping, traceability of decisions, and the courage to say “no” when a requested shortcut would undercut later sprints. A partner that treats those steps casually is very unlikely to protect a two-week window from chaos.

Epilogue

Operation Absolute Resolve will stay controversial, yet one lesson is simple for software leaders. Only when extensive, silent preparation has already mapped out the course can short bursts of work be safely undertaken. The same holds for teams that rely on outsourcing software development. Let the sprint be a limited window of execution, treat the first few months as reconnaissance, and let the magic be the beginning of a calm delivery.

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