Affordability Engineering Framework (AEF) Overview

Abstract

The current economic environment and mounting federal budget deficits are placing considerable economic stress on the Department of Defense (DoD) and other government agencies. Investments for new capabilities, upgrades and enhancements to existing systems as well as simple continuations of existing programs requires careful analysis and evaluation of their affordability, efficiency and effectiveness. The Affordability Engineering Framework (AEF) is being designed to help the DoD respond to these imminent fiscal realities and advance the practice of affordability engineering to improve acquisition program success. The AEF is a structured, actionable approach with tools and techniques to address affordability challenges throughout the lifecycle. The AEF uses multi-disciplinary teams to quantitatively evaluate program affordability while identifying integrated cost, schedule and performance trade space. The AEF includes four steps: an affordability risk assessment, a validation approach for coupling Technical Baselines and program cost estimates, a deliberate tradeoff process, and the generation of preferred courses of action with a recommendation based on a portfolio analysis methodology. The AEF can provide benefit across a wide range of acquisition programs and provide the affordability information for data-driven program decision-making. In the coming months the AEF will be piloted and migrated across selected DoD programs for implementation with iterative evaluation and development.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 10, 2020
Accession Number
AD1108604

Entities

Organizations

  • MITRE Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Cost Analysis
  • Cost Estimates
  • Costs
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Federal Budgets
  • Financial Management
  • Life Cycles
  • Production
  • Program Management
  • Risk
  • Risk Analysis
  • Risk Management
  • Systems Engineering
  • Test And Evaluation

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Space