Development of a Systems Engineering Career Competency Model for the U.S. Department of Defense

Abstract

The U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation is sponsoring a strategic initiative led by a team from the Naval Postgraduate School Systems Engineering Department to implement an overall approach to study and develop a systems engineering career competency model. The Naval Postgraduate School is working in collaboration with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and the Missile Defense Agency to develop and verify the competencies used by defense systems engineers. Verification of the competency model is critical to allow it to be used as a basis for “high stakes” human resource functions for all of the U.S. Department of Defense. This paper presents the development of the systems engineering career competency model, and the subsequent efforts to have the systems engineering competencies verified.

The U.S. Department of the Navy's Systems Engineering Career Competency Model: Identification of Proficiency Levels and Career Path Modeling

“…The focus of this paper will be the third phase of the SECCM Project, which includes a competency gap analysis and career path modeling. The second phase is discussed in White et al (2016). Figure 1 illustrates the SECCM Project Scope and details, with the Proficiency Level Development leading into the Competency Gap Analysis and Career Path Modeling.…”

Responsibility Assignment in Systems Engineering

“…This is critical, among other things, as responsibilities are not clearly specified in literature and Systems Engineering handbooks. Initial approaches to simplify the transfer of practice are offered by competency models, such as those described by the U.S. Department of Defense (Whitcomb et al 2017;White et al 2016). The approach in this paper is based on three steps to derive a responsibility assignment combining Systems Engineering and Project Management roles.…”