Integration of Parametric Cost Estimation with System Architecture – It's a dirty job but someone has to do it!

Abstract

The rapid adoption and advancement of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methods and tools opens up new avenues of systems engineering practices. One of them is cost estimation. As a key enabler for affordability analysis and budgetary decision making, cost estimation is an essential component for all system development and sustainment efforts. However, cost estimation is typically a separate endeavor from the design and development effort, creating a professional “chasm” between the worlds of systems designers and of cost analysts, causing a disconnect between the system as designed and the cost and effort required to build it. This paper describes an approach to “tightly” integrate the existing practice of parametric cost estimation with the system architecture development process by leveraging MBSE and SysML to enable repeatable and efficient estimation of system development cost, and to allow system cost and affordability to be incorporated into the “digital thread” of the design while improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the cost estimation process. By expanding our previous work (Papke, Wang and Pavalkis 2017), this paper describes a new concept of operation (CONOP) for system development, enabled by the integrated SysML and COSYSMO modeling environment, that effectively connects the cost baselines to the technical baselines throughout the project life cycle. This new CONOP presents another step towards “pulling the digital thread” by making affordability and economic analysis an integral part of the system architecture.