11.4.2 Systems Engineering Return on Investment

Research work continues into Systems Engineering Return on Investment (SE-ROI) following prior work on Value of Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering Effectiveness. This paper presents major results in the form of statistically proven relationships between systems engineering (SE) activities and the technical, schedule and cost success of programs. It has been found that all defined SE activities correlate positively with program success as measured in three of four success metrics used (cost overrun, schedule overrun and perceptive success). When the effect of program characterization parameters is included, the correlation is strong with optimum levels of SE activities as much as 25% of a program cost. The paper presents quantified values for the relationships, indicating appropriate levels of each SE activity that correlate to optimum levels of success. Results show a surprising lack of correlation between SE activities and the technical quality of the product system, for which some possible explanations are provided.