The process of enhancing a systems engineering training and development program

Abstract

The MITRE Institute of MITRE Human Resources, the training and development organization of the MITRE Corporation, was requested by senior management to develop and add new content to our systems engineering curriculum in the area of Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE). As part of the process of meeting this request, the MITRE Institute base lined our present offerings in the area of systems engineering and then laid out a program to enhance our existing offerings and extend our training and development program to include ESE. During the base lining effort, the MITRE Institute's Technical Group found that while they had significant deep education and training in the area of systems and domain engineering, approximately 70 different offerings over a four-year period, there were some items missing from the program. For example, the systems engineering program was missing an overview course or courses that integrated the whole program, it needed a better continuous life cycle connection across the curriculum, it needed a stronger connection between management, the employee and the MITRE Institute to ensure that the employees who should receive systems engineering training and development do receive systems engineering training and development, and the curriculum needed to be enhanced in the area of ESE. A systems approach was taken and a program plan has been laid out to enhance the systems engineering program by building a competency model for systems engineers and then analyzing by gap analysis for training and development requirements in relation to the required competencies. The MITRE Institute is also working with other internal groups like our Systems Engineering Process Office (SEPO), our Center for Acquisition and Systems Analysis (CASA), and our research program (MITRE Technology Program -MTP) to build the required ESE content. The outputs from this program will be sevenfold, including a competency model for systems engineers, a revised Traditional Systems Engineering (TSE) curriculum, on-the-job activities to build systems engineering competency, long-term metrics for success, a direct tie to staff Performance and Development (P&D) plans in the area of systems engineering, a possible certification program, and a newly developed Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE) Curriculum