9.1.2 Demographics in Measuring Systems Engineering Return on Investment (SE-ROI)

Research work continues into Systems Engineering Return on Investment (SE-ROI) following prior work on Value of Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering Effectiveness. In the current work, 1.5-hour interviews are being held with the leaders of completed system development programs to obtain extensive data on systems engineering activities, program success measures, and possible correlative parameters. The resulting information is being examined statistical to determine empirical knowledge about the return on investment of systems engineering activities. As of this writing, interesting results in the demographics have been observed based on 30 program interviews. This paper provides information showing (a) source information on the interviewed programs, (b) observed quantitative breakdown of systems engineering effort into eight activities, (c) histogram spreads of the observed characteristics of the source programs, and (d) histogram spreads of the observed correlative parameters. The paper also provides initial indications of the differences between successful and unsuccessful programs.