Systems engineering in commercial and government organizations

Abstract

Systems engineering (SE) practitioners in research and development (R&D) projects have much general but little specific guidance to manage them. Previous research in SE has contributed to growing advice on tailoring SE efforts given particular project characteristics. This study bolsters this effort by comparing, contrasting, and exploring interactions between commercial and government project risks, success, and SE processes. Demographic company and project information provide insight into commercial and government populations of interest. Coupled with distributed team member interactions, a clearer context for discussing results and conclusions is achieved. Commercial and government projects prove to be principally similar, yet appreciably unique. Introduction Commercial and government organizations have similar intentions, yet a fundamental difference of their respective operating environments is of critical importance in appreciating how systems engineering (SE) is performed and judged as a success or failure in research and development (R&D). Both work to meet customer demands on time and within budget, but the robustness, or lackthereof, of the business case leads to an intuitive notion that commercial and