Publication

This document is a summary of the work that was completed in the first year of the SERC Research Topic DO1/TTO2/0016 ―Developing Systems Engineering Experience Accelerator (SEEA) Prototype and Roadmap‖ supported by the Defense Acquisition University. The purpose of the research project is to test the feasibility of a simulated approach for accelerating systems engineering competency development in the learner. The SEEA research project hypothesis is: 

By using technology we can create a simulation that will put the learner in an experiential, emotional state and effectively compress time and greatly accelerate the learning of a systems engineer faster than would occur naturally on the job. 

1. Project Goals & Success Metrics Defined
2. Critical Competencies and Maturation Points Identified
3. Appropriate Learning Experiences Created
4. Open Architecture Defined
5. Technologies Selected
6. Prototype Developed
7. Prototype Demonstrated
8. Final Report Written (this document)

In addition to the work activities, four top program risks were identified and tracked throughout the first year of the program:

1. Risk: Inability to support known and evolving customer requirements with current staff, budget and timeframe. Mitigation: Build a detailed requirements list with effort estimations, and periodically review and re-prioritize the list with stakeholders identifying and resolving potential conflicts as they arise.
2. Risk: Inability to tradeoff the ability to rapidly create a prototype vs. a long term architecture and technology. Mitigation: Identify upfront the areas where the long term architecture and technology is unknown, or where it may be difficult to implement, and determine how and when the prototype implementation decision will be made and monitor throughout the prototype development process.
3. Risk: Inability to produce a prototype that provides a compelling experience, supports the desired learning and is seen to be authentic. This includes the development of dialogue and feedback to the Learner that are reasonable and plausible from both a behavioral and technical perspective. Mitigation: Develop a success criteria trade-off framework and identify measures to track these success criteria during the development phase. Iteratively develop dialogue and feedback used during simulation that is based on inputs from SMEs. Have subject matter experts (SE and UAV) and representatives of the target learners go through the Experience throughout the development process providing continuous input.
4. Risk: Inability to successfully integrate our many ideas, approaches, requirements and developed technology and design. Mitigation: Employ a modular, loosely-coupled architecture that enables geographically-distributed developers to work independently.

At the end of the first year, a set of lessons learned were compiled and categorized into the following five areas:

1. Competencies, Learning and Content
2. Complexity/Effort vs. Authenticity/Learning
3. Technology
4. R&D Processes
5. Sponsor Involvement

Follow-on work has been defined for the next year in three phases:

• Phase 1: Update Documentation and Planning (June 2011)
• Phase 2: Prototype Development (July 2011 – November 2011)
• Phase 3: Prototype Validation (December 2011 – May 2012)

Subsequent work will involve measuring and analyzing pilot results.