A Systems Engineering Approach to Program Risk Management

Over the past 20 years, there have been high-profile examples of Department of the Navy (DON) unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) programs with expensive cost overruns and late deliveries.While best practices exist to account for cost and schedule risk, this article presents a practical approach to assessing the likelihood of success through model-based conceptual design (MBCD) within a real-world problem context.The author applies model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to quantify the impact MBCD has on the success of a critical UUV software update when applied prior to expensive design, test, and delivery.First, the scope is framed with a realistic narrative, then the existing UUV development architecture is modeled to set the existing DON process in context.Next, a formal time and cost model is simulated to set baseline values for the modeled scenario, including user-focused MBCD.Finally, simulation and analysis of four scenarios capturing varying levels of rework demonstrate a significant reduction in time and cost.While narrowly focused on a UUV development scenario, future work can generalize the approach and quantify the impact of these methods to quantify, track, and mitigate program risk across DON acquisition programs.