Publication

This report presents the results of the research on research task WRT-1058: Systems Engineering Modernization Policy, Practice, and Workforce Roadmaps. This research task began with a companion research task, WRT-1051: Program Managers Guide to Digital and Agile Systems Engineering Process Transformation. Together, these support a larger set of activities being led by OUSD/RE under the term “Systems Engineering Modernization” (SEMOD). The motivation for SEMOD stems from the need to integrate across independent guidance provided down to the DoD SE and acquisition communities related to Digital Engineering, Modular Open Systems Approach, Mission Engineering, and Software Engineering/Agile/Devops, and across the multiple pathways of the Adaptive Acquisition Framework. The SERC/government research team found there is a lack of an integrated approach to implementation of SE Focus Areas that is creating a delay in full implementation of the Digital Transformation which is necessary to ensure the relevant guidance, skills, and training are available to deliver a robust, disciplined approach to weapon systems acquisition. The SERC has been tasked with multiple research threads in this research:

1. SEMOD Framework: create an integrating framework that incorporate the key activities in each focus area and generate options for program implementation. The initial integration framework was developed on WRT-1051 and used to inform a series of workshops. These workshops resulted in a set of pain points for integration. The updated integration framework, termed “the Supra-System Model,” is discussed in Part 1 of this report.
2. SEMOD Roadmaps: develop a set of roadmaps that define research and development activities for long-term implementation of SE Modernization into DoD engineering and acquisition activities. Part 2 of this report updates the SEMOD pain points from WRT-1051 and links these to a set of roadmaps. Part 3 of this report focuses in on the concept of a Government Reference Architecture (GRA) and associated Modular Open Systems Approaches (MOSA) as a means to better manage the government/contractor workflows and authorities over time.
3. SEMOD Policy and Guidance: the Team completed an analysis in WRT-1051 of DoD policy and guidance documents across the SEMOD focus areas and acquisition pathways. Part 4 of this report updates the analysis and provides a sample rewrite of the “Engineering of Defense Systems Guide” that incorporates more of a “how-to” guide to SE Modernization across focus areas and acquisition pathways.
4. SEMOD Information Graph: a goal of SEMOD was to create an information graph linking information from policy and guidance and related lessons learned into an easily accessed digital tool. This research found that there is not a base ontology that links systems engineering and acquisition, definitions are not consistent, and there is no standard common taxonomy to draw from. Part 5 of this report describes initial research toward building a formal digital ontology linking military doctrine, engineering, and acquisition as a starting point to this goal.
5. SEMOD Lessons Learned: Part 6 of this report provides a set of research activities focused on development and collection of lessons learned in SE Modernization. These lessons learned reflect both current and future needs. All the lessons learned are related to digital transformation and associated digital and model based SE practices. The lessons leaned areas are exemplar reference implementations, adoption, modeling guidance, and data management.
6. Workforce Development Strategies: the project partnered with the Defense Acquisition University to explore workforce development strategies specific to SEMOD. Part 7 discusses this work and opportunities for future effort.

Primary findings of this research include:

• SE Modernization responds to the ongoing digital transformation of DoD acquisition and sustainment activities which have traditionally followed rigorous systems engineering processes. The systems engineering processes remain valid, but the practices need to change to take advantage of the digital transformation. The transformation is guided by the DoD Digital Engineering strategy as an "an integrated digital approach that uses authoritative sources of system data and models as a continuum across disciplines to support lifecycle activities from concept through disposal." We derived a primary value statement from digital transformation as “realized in more seamless and efficient transfer of data and models from underlying performance drivers through models to decisions, as well as ease of drilling back down from decisions to data” and goal of SE Modernization process as “create a more agile and responsive acquisition system that can quickly and effectively meet the needs of the warfighter.” To date DoD DE efforts have been more focused on the creation of authoritative sources of data and models than the value achieved by digitizing the underlying transformations and pursuing agile lifecycle process innovation. This is creating slow uptake of modernized systems engineering capabilities and processes in DoD program offices.
• DoD policy and guidance as related to the four focus areas, systems engineering and engineering of defense systems, and the six Adaptive Acquisition pathways is poorly integrated. Current policy and guidance suffer from independent terminology and jargon across each focus area and acquisition pathway. Current policy and guidance provide only limited communication of the intent of the digital transformation. In addition, current policy and guidance remain highly milestone driven, overly focused on new development, and lack focus on update and sustainment - despite DoD calls for more continuous and rapid deployment of capabilities. Finally, the vision in the DoD Data Strategy of “a data-centric organization that uses data at speed and scale for operational advantage and increased efficiency” is not sufficiently captured into engineering policy and guidance.
• As a result, the systems engineering and related acquisition guidance, as well as much of the systems engineering professional community guidance, continues to operate with a mental model of linear, milestone driven technical and management processes as determined by static, often document based artifacts. The culture is proving difficult to overcome in the DoD and defense industrial base. In this research we developed and have been promoting a new mental model of a systems lifecycle – the “supra-system model” – that is continuously iterated and layered from data to models to decision artifacts. This mental model helped to organize a much more focused set of SEMOD pain points and lessons learned.
• Associated with both the Data Strategy and the Digital Engineering Strategy, programs are finding that cost, complexity and lack of guidance on development of tailored Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) for Systems Engineering remains a primary pain point. WRT-1051 recommended additional development of a set of Exemplar Reference Implementations (ERIs) for these IDEs as tailored to the types of systems and acquisition programs within a DoD program office. This report further recommends the development of a concept of operations and set of use cases as an initial step toward this need.
• This report proposes the need for and actions that should be taken to establish such an exemplar reference architecture. The organization of this report is intentionally organized into a set of smaller standalone report sections. This was done so that each report could be entered as a standalone artifact into the SE Modernization Body of Knowledge (SEMODBoK).