INSPIRD INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF173-010

Description

Digital Engineering (DE) is the collaborative use of digital artifacts and tools to perform engineering functions. DE will improve acquisition, management, and engineering of defense systems throughout their lifecycles. Realizing these benefits will require deployment of an ecosystem that will impact people, process, tools and IT infrastructure; and incur related costs.Many architectures are possible for the DE ecosystem. Each architecture will satisfy different stakeholder needs and incur different costs at different times. We propose the development of an Integrated Dynamic DE Ecosystem Cost-model (IDEC) that models costs at an enterprise level and supports analyses of alternates. We will identify gaps between DE IT needs and existing DoD capabilities. Costs to fill IT capability gaps will be incorporated into IDEC. Ecosystem deployment costs for people and processes will be incorporated into IDEC. IDEC will model risks and support sensitivity analysis.IDEC will address stakeholder budgeting requirements and support analysis across types of appropriations. We will define and prioritize potential cost model outputs and develop a methodology to analyze costs. Phase I will demonstrate this methodology using a Microsoft Excel model. Phase II will develop an efficient web-based software tool to automate cost model analysis.