A model of enterprise systems engineering contributions to acquisition success

Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual causal model for the contributions of enterprise systems engineering (ESE) to systems acquisition success when the systems under development are complex and include direct interaction between users and the finished product (versus an embedded effort). The model takes the form of a directed acyclic graph and its major components consist of collaboration support, ESE technique application, system characteristics, and organizational characteristics. As initial validation, we converted this conceptual model to a computational model using our Descriptive to Executable SIMulation (DESIM) modeling method. By using the executable model, we obtained unbiased data based on subject matter experts' (SMEs') mental models so that we could determine the degree to which the SMEs in the aggregate agreed with the model's components and relationships.