Helix - Phases 1 and 2

Abstract

Abstract : The US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), comprising contractors that develop and deliver systems to the DoD, have been facing major systems engineering challenges in recent years (e.g. GAO 2008, 2011, 2012). Mission requirements are evolving and they demand ever more sophisticated and complex systems (e.g. Boehm et al. 2010; INCOSE Technical Operations 2007; Davidz and Nightingale 2007, Frank et al. 2007); the tools, processes, and technologies that systems engineers must master keep changing ever more rapidly (e.g. Frank 2006); and budgets and schedules are being compressed dramatically. Certainly, one of the more significant concerns is that thousands of systems engineers in the defense workforce are nearing retirement and will be removing with them hundreds of thousands of staff- years of experience as presented in SPRDE Functional Career Field: Critical Acquisition Workforce Data FY 2013-Q3. (DoD 2013) Organizations have responded to these challenges in a variety of ways, such as offering extended training and education to their current workforce or systematically seeking to select specialty engineers with promise as systems engineers and incorporating them into the ranks of (generalist) systems engineers. It is unknown if these actions are producing the expected results because there is no common understanding of the diverse roles that systems engineers play; how they are selected and evaluated; what competencies are most important for different roles; how to evaluate effectiveness; how experience impacts effectiveness. These and many other insights will be critical to maintaining and growing the systems engineering workforce in the US DoD and DIB.