Date: Tuesday, May 6, 2009

Location: Reagan Building, Ground Floor by the Berlin Wall Entrance
(at Federal Triangle Metro Stations), Washington, D.C.

Registration is required; (no cost to participants) - Click here to download a copy of the Registration form.  Completed Registration forms should be e-mailed to Doris Schultz, SERC Director of Operations, at dschultz@stevens.edu, or sent via fax to 201.216.8550.

Workshop Overview:

One of the first two tasks being performed by the new DoD Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) involves Assessing Systems Engineering Effectiveness Measures (EM).  It is led by USC and includes Fraunhofer-Maryland, Stevens, and U of Alabama-Huntsville.  The project has assessed over two dozen candidate measurement frameworks for evaluating how well a project is doing its systems engineering.  We identified the eight leading candidates and developed a coverage matrix of 45 individual EMs used in the frameworks.   We found a good deal of commonality among the frameworks, and developed a more organized way of classifying the EMs into a 4-category, 18-element framework, and validated it via mappings from other systems engineering guidance documents such as the DoD Systems Engineering Plan Preparation Guide.

On March 31 and April 1, we held an initial workshop on our progress to date.  It indicated that we were going in the right direction, but identified some additional EM frameworks that we are now evaluating and assimilating.  It led us to develop a top-level operational concept for the EM capability, which we are now in the process of elaborating.  At the May 6 workshop, we will summarize the resulting capability and concept of operations, which involves the continuous operation of the next version of the INCOSE Leading Indicators capability, an evidence-based EM review tool, and perhaps a similar review tool for evaluating the adequacy of a project's systems engineering personnel plans and capabilities.  We will also demonstrate prototypes of the tools, and explore having early adopters pilot the tools on representative projects (we have two early adopters lined up to date).

Besides technical feedback on the Systems Engineering Effectiveness Measures task, we will provide a short update on the other initial SERC task to assess Systems Engineering Methods, Processes, and Tools.  We will also give interested external participants (and our collaborator organizations) a better idea of the SERC as a UARC and how it can collaborate with government organizations, FFRDCs, industry, professional societies, and industry groups.  We will also
provide a view of upcoming SERC technical tasks being planned.

Click here to download a copy of the May 6 SERC Workshop Agenda.

Hotel and Lodging: Marriott at Metro Center, Washington, DC or Marriott Key Bridge Hotel, Arlington, VA.  (Government rates of $209/night at the Marriott Hotels in Washington, DC apply.)