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Bourque, P. Fairley eds. Brooks, Fred What systems engineering activities do you perform on your program? How well does your program perform? We surveyed different programs. Although most programs were supplying systems for the U.
Our latest results, published in the SEI technical report, The Business Case for Systems Engineering Study: Results of the Systems Engineering Effectiveness Study , identified strong links between the performance of systems engineering tasks and overall program performance. These results provide a convincing case for the value of systems engineering. This latest study collected information from participating programs along three dimensions:. We assessed SE deployment by examining both the presence and the quality of work products resulting from SE activities.
Based on this assessment, SE deployment for each program was categorized as either low, medium, or high. We assessed program performance as a combination of cost performance satisfaction of budget , schedule performance, and technical performance satisfaction of requirements.
Again, based on this assessment, program performance for each program was categorized as either low, medium, or high. Some programs are inherently more challenging than others due to factors such as size, duration, technology maturity, interoperability requirements, etc. Based on the combination of these factors, program challenge was categorized as either low, medium, or high.
We then looked for relationships between these metrics. We found a very strong relationship between SE deployment and program performance. In particular, as programs deployed more SE, they delivered better performance. For example, among those programs deploying the least SE, only 15 percent delivered the highest level of program performance.
Among those deploying the most SE, however, 56 percent delivered the highest level of program performance. As one would expect, our research showed an inverse relationship between program challenge and program performance. But, we also learned that SE practices became even more valuable when used with these challenging programs.
We already noted that the number of programs delivering high program performance increased from 15 percent to 56 percent as SE deployment increased. For the most challenging programs, however, the number of programs delivering high program performance increased from 8 percent to 62 percent with increased SE deployment. This result clearly shows the increasing need for SE as programs become more challenging. As mentioned above, we measured SE deployment by assessing SE-related work products for each program.
Now, we could group these artifacts into process areas such as. Grouping artifacts into process areas enabled us to probe more deeply into the relationships between SE and program performance, identifying not only the overall benefit of SE but also the benefit of specific SE processes.
For each program, we assessed SE deployment in each of the 11 process areas above and analyzed the relationship to program performance. Here again, we found strong supporting relationships for all SE process areas - increased SE deployment in any of these areas contributed to better program performance. Relationships to program performance, however, were stronger in some than in others. Particularly strong relationships to program performance were found for. The number of programs delivering highest performance increased from 13 percent to 50 percent as SE activities related to program planning increased.
The number of programs delivering highest performance increased from 21 percent to 58 percent as SE activities related to requirements development and management increased. The number of programs delivering highest performance increased from 16 percent to 54 percent as SE activities related to verification increased.
The number of programs delivering highest performance increased from 16 percent to 49 percent as SE activities related to product architecture increased. As strong as these relationships were, we found that they grew even stronger for the more challenging programs.
The results of our research can be used in a number of ways by system developers, system acquirers, and academia. For example, our findings constitute a baseline of SE deployment across the industries surveyed. System developers can use our methods to assess their own SE capabilities, compare them to this baseline, and identify their strengths and weaknesses. They can then develop process improvement plans to improve their weaknesses and strategies to leverage their strengths.
We continue to work with defense contractors who are applying this process to improve their SE capabilities. System acquirers can also benefit from these findings. A program management office PMO acquiring a system needs to deploy good SE practices in planning the program, defining system requirements, developing system architectures, etc. For example, the PMO must first include in the solicitation a definition of SE activities that they expect from the supplier.
They should evaluate the supplier's response to these expectations as a factor in the selection of the supplier. They should also ensure that the SE expectations are included in the contract. They should monitor the supplier's performance throughout execution to ensure that SE expectations are being met. The academic community can also use the results from our study.
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