| The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has recently revised the defense acquisition system to address suspected root causes of unwanted acquisition outcomes. This dissertation applied two systems thinking methodologies in a uniquely integrated fashion to provide an in-depth review and interpretation of the revised defense acquisition system as put forth in 7 January 2015 DoDI 5000.02. One of the major changes in the revised acquisition system is an increased emphasis on systems engineering trade-offs made between capability requirements and lifecycle costs early in the acquisition process in order to ensure realistic program baselines are established such that associated lifecycle costs of a contemplated system are affordable within future budgets. Given that systems engineering trade-off analyses will play a pivotal role in future defense acquisition efforts, this research employed a two phase, exploratory sequential and embedded mixed methods approach (Creswell, 2014) to take an in-depth look at the state of literature surrounding systems engineering trade-off analyses, identify potential pitfalls associated with the typical execution of a systems engineering trade-off analysis, quantify the risk that potential pitfalls pose to acquisition decision quality, suggest remedies to mitigate the risk of each pitfall, and measure the potential usefulness of contemplated innovations that may help improve the quality of future systems engineering trade-off analyses. In the first phase of this mixed methods study, qualitative data was captured through field observations and direct interviews with U.S. defense acquisition professionals executing systems engineering trade analyses. In the second phase, a larger sample of systems engineering professionals and military operations research professionals involved in defense acquisition were surveyed to help interpret qualitative findings of the first phase. The survey instrument was designed using Survey Monkey and was deployed through a link posted on several groups within LinkedIn and was also sent directly via email to those with known experience in this research area. The survey was open for a two month period and collected responses from 181 participants. The findings and recommendations of this research were communicated in a thorough description of the integrated systems engineering decision management (ISEDM) process developed as part of this dissertation. |
