Engineering and program management are making increased use of models to handle complex problems. While models have always been part of key activities, they have been traditionally focused on specific problems and not necessarily developed in a coordinated manner where they can be shared across stakeholders, interfaced with one another, or provided flexible report types. The DOD Digital Engineering (DE) strategy, released in July 2018, defines a comprehensive set of goals for implementing modeling across a project, program, and enterprise lifecycle. While the DE strategy is DOD-wide, a broad acceptance throughout the Intelligence Community and civil space is realizing the benefits of an overall strategy to implement modeling.

An Overall Modeling Strategy

Projects, programs, and enterprise-level organizations have a need to assess the appropriate levels in terms of description and specificity. An assessment tool would be useful to develop strategy, implementation plans, and/or assess specific implementations for systems engineering, project/program management, information technology enablement, or modeling development.

Joe Hale of NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and Ryan Noguchi of The Aerospace Corporation independently came up with modeling assessment matrices that had comparable properties but identified different needed capabilities. Hale had briefed his approach across NASA, and Noguchi had briefed his at the November 2016 Aerospace System Engineering Forum focus day.

An INCOSE-Endorsed Matrix for Modeling

The Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Systems Engineering) (ODASD(SE)) asked both of them to brief the Digital Engineering Working Group in November 2017 and at the January international workshop of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). Al Hoheb, The Aerospace Corporation, and Hale co-ran the January workshop that resulted in the INCOSE Challenge Team effort to produce a single INCOSE-endorsed matrix.

The matrix has adopted the ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 concepts for systems engineering, reviews, and audits as well as many other concepts, such as digital model, digital twin, digital thread, and authoritative source of truth.

Hale and Hoheb continued the matrix development through additional workshops at the May Aerospace Systems Engineering Forum in Chantilly and online INCOSE Challenge Team meetings. Since January, the guide has gone from a framework to a fully populated first draft with some name changes and concept changes. Their development roadmap includes more workshops at upcoming INCOSE, National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), and Aerospace events, along with online Challenge Team meetings.

If you’d like to be added to the challenge team, please contact either Al Hoheb at albert.c.hoheb@aero.org or Joe Hale at joe.hale@NASA.gov.