Digital Engineering Competency Framework
Human Capital Development Dr. Nicole Hutchison
Co-Principal Investigators:
Dr. Dinesh Verma
In support of the DoD’s implementation of the Digital Engineering Strategy, researchers shall investigate the critical digital engineering knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by the DoD acquisition workforce. Researchers shall develop a Digital Engineering Competency Framework and take into consideration the following:
- Must support the implementation of 2018 Digital Engineering Strategy by each Component based on their organic DE processes and tools.
- Must be component agnostic
- Must follow DoDI 1400.24 volume 250
This effort builds upon the joint program established by FY18 DAWDF Digital Engineering Cohort effort—where government resources participated in an interactive and dynamic digital engineering experience.
In addition, this effort will use, but not be limited to, the following resources: activities in the DoD Components that perform digital engineering (e.g. the Military Services and relevant 4th Estate Agencies); published DoD digital engineering-related policy, guidance and/or reports; DEWG generated artifacts; prior competency studies and reports; industry best practices; existing competency models (IEEE’s Software Engineering Book of Knowledge (SWEBOK), INCOSE’s Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK), INCOSE Systems Engineering Competency Framework (July 2018), DOD Systems Engineering Career Competency Model (SECCM) and the SECCM Competency Network, competency models from other industry, Government agencies); and the Department’s current competency models for the Engineering, Program Management, Information Technology, et al, career fields.
The figure below provides an overview of the planned approach for WRT-1006, which will use literature findings to develop a draft model that will be iterated with subject matter experts through a series of workshops. At appropriate points, the draft model(s) will be reviewed through community presentations and sponsor engagement. Once the model is sufficiently mature, it will be compared with the existing DAU curriculum (ACQ and ENG) to determine what elements of existing curriculum already support these competencies. Gaps will be noted, and training recommendations will be developed. As with the development of the model itself, this should be an iterative process.
The SERC researchers will perform the seven tasks outlined in the SOW, broken into two phases. The first phase focuses on the development of the Digital Engineering Competency Framework (DECF) while the second phase focuses on the alignment between the DECF and available DAU curricula, as well as developing rigorous recommendations for training that will support digital engineering competency as part of DAU’s workforce development.