Document

Report Brief

This document is a summary of the work that was completed in the first year of the

SERC Research Topic DO1/TTO2/0016 ―"Developing Systems Engineering Experience

Accelerator (SEEA) Prototype and Roadmap" supported by the Defense Acquisition

University. The purpose of the research project is to test the feasibility of a simulated

approach for accelerating systems engineering competency development in the learner.

The SEEA research project hypothesis is:

By using technology we can create a simulation that will put the learner in an

experiential, emotional state and effectively compress time and greatly accelerate

the learning of a systems engineer faster than would occur naturally on the job.

The major research activities that were completed in the baseline year are as follows:

1. Project Goals & Success Metrics Defined

2. Critical Competencies and Maturation Points Identified

3. Appropriate Learning Experiences Created

4. Open Architecture Defined

5. Technologies Selected

6. Prototype Developed

7. Prototype Demonstrated

8. Final Report Written (this document)

In addition to the work activities, four top program risks were identified and tracked

throughout the first year of the program:

1. Risk: Inability to support known and evolving customer requirements with

current staff, budget and timeframe. Mitigation: Build a detailed requirements

list with effort estimations, and periodically review and re-prioritize the list with

stakeholders identifying and resolving potential conflicts as they arise.

2. Risk: Inability to tradeoff the ability to rapidly create a prototype vs. a long term

architecture and technology. Mitigation: Identify upfront the areas where the

long term architecture and technology is unknown, or where it may be difficult to

implement, and determine how and when the prototype implementation decision

will be made and monitor throughout the prototype development process.

3. Risk: Inability to produce a prototype that provides a compelling experience,

supports the desired learning and is seen to be authentic. This includes the

development of dialogue and feedback to the Learner that are reasonable and

plausible from both a behavioral and technical perspective. Mitigation: Develop

a success criteria trade-off framework and identify measures to track these

success criteria during the development phase. Iteratively develop dialogue and

feedback used during simulation that is based on inputs from SMEs. Have

subject matter experts (SE and UAV) and representatives of the target learners go

through the Experience throughout the development process providing

continuous input.

4. Risk: Inability to successfully integrate our many ideas, approaches,

requirements and developed technology and design. Mitigation: Employ a

modular, loosely-coupled architecture that enables geographically-distributed

developers to work independently.