Affiliations: School of Engineering and Applied Science, George
Washington University, Washington, DC, USA | Operations Research and Engineering Management, School
of Engineering and Applied Science, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA | Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, School
of Engineering and Applied Science, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Justin M. Rettaliata, School of
Engineering and Applied Science, George Washington University, Washington, DC,
USA. E-mail: jretal@gmail.com
Abstract: In 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) performed a
study on 11 Department of Defense (DoD) programs and compared how requirements
were developed between DoD and private industry. The study found that the DoD
did not follow good Systems Engineering practices when developing requirements,
resulting in program cost and schedule overruns. With 2011 Defense spending at
approximately $711B, it is undeniable that significant portions of these
resources are spent on programs that meet their demise due to poorly developed
requirements documentation. Such requirements are poorly written, lack clear
traceability and threaten the viability of the programs. The question arises whether these issues are due to poor training during
the requirements definition process, lack of sufficient information and expertise
available at program initiation, or a decrease in emphasis on establishing quality
attributes for requirements. This study evaluates requirement attributes for
materiel and non-materiel solution sets, and whether these attributes are the
same or different. A case study example is presented identifying a selected set
of requirement attributes and, with the aid of expert practitioner knowledge,
these attributes are ranked in order of preference for materiel and
non-materiel solutions sets.
Keywords: Requirement attributes, department of defense (DoD) requirement generation, materiel solution, non-materiel solution, discrete choice model
