SE Leading Indicators Guide

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Several policies calling for improved systems engineering on programs were released by DoD and the services during 20041. During this period, the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) Consortium was tasked with assisting with the systems engineering revitalization activity. In June 2004, an Air Force/LAI Workshop on Systems Engineering for Robustness2 was held to establish the groundwork for several initiatives in support of systems engineering revitalization. One of these initiatives focused on leading indicators for evaluating the goodness of systems engineering on a program. In December 2005, the beta version of this document was released, describing the initial set of SE Leading Indicators. This initial set reflected the subset of possible candidate indicators that were considered to be the highest priority by the team, recognizing that the set was not exhaustive. In June 2007, this Version 1.0 document was released following the completion of a validation phase which included pilot applications of the leading indicators, a research study, various workshops, and an industry survey. Recommendations and further guidance on interpretation has been added based on results of the validation phase. Additional SE Leading Indicators will be added in future updates as these are identified, defined, and evolved.

What are Leading Indicators? A leading indicator is a measure for evaluating the effectiveness of a how a specific activity is applied on a program in a manner that provides information about impacts that are likely to affect the system performance objectives. A leading indicator may be an individual measure, or collection of measures, that are predictive of future system performance before the performance is realized. Leading indicators aid leadership in delivering value to customers and end users, while assisting in taking interventions and actions to avoid rework and wasted effort.