 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
|||||
|
|
|
Home > News & Events > MITRE Publications > The MITRE Digest > | |||||||||||||||||||
The Utility of the "Ilities": Flexible Planning for an Uncertain Future December 2007
As far as get-rich-quick schemes go, building a parking garage in the midst of a bustling city seems a sure bet. So let's build one. But which one? Your demographic study contends that the current population of the city warrants a three-story garage. But the study also projects the population growing within the next five years to a level sufficient to support an eight-story garage. Adding five more stories to the garage, however, will increase the building cost by 30 percent. Do you risk the extra expenditure in hopes of maximizing your profit in five years if the demographic projection proves true? Or do you plan conservatively and stick to three stories, even if it limits the usefulness of the garage in the future? MITRE's sponsors face decisions like this every day. To stay within budgetary constraints, project managers must develop systems that mesh the needs of today with the ability to meet changing mission challenges over the course of their life cycle. This is especially true of complex systems engineering projects. But without knowing exactly what the future will bring, how can a project manager determine which features to build into a system? John Dahlgren, a MITRE communications engineer, wants to make these decisions easier and more accurate for our sponsors by analyzing the qualities that enable systems to evolve to support changing needs—flexibility, adaptability, upgradability, and reliability. Through the "System Complexity, the 'ilities,' and Robustness" project, Dahlgren hopes that by more precisely quantifying the value of these "ilities," he can make them available as a measurable value in a project manager's cost-benefit analysis. More Options, More Flexibility—and Lower Costs The first step to incorporating ilities into the design process is to understand why some systems perform well in the ilities and others don't. "Look at the B-52 bomber," Dahlgren says. "It was designed for a worst-case scenario. You can't get much worse than a nuclear war. Because of that design choice, the plane was so over-designed that it lent itself later on to a variety of tasks for which it was not initially intended, like close-air support, flying testing equipment over Chernobyl, and transporting cruise missiles." The research was conducted through the MITRE Technology Program, which seeks innovative solutions to our sponsors' most pressing needs. Dahlgren worked in partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard de Neufville and his students. The team researched different systems that have earned renown for their ilities, dissecting systems such as Visa International, mobile oil platforms, and micro-sized unmanned aircraft (as well as the B-52). Each system has a lesson on design flexibility to impart. The challenge is to quantify them in meaningful ways. The value of a military system, for example, cannot be measured in the same way as a commercial product. Ultimately, MITRE staff drawing up the blueprints of a project would not only be able to offer the sponsor a grocery list of options, but also provide an accurate assessment of the benefits those options will offer in the near and distant future. The more options in place in a system, the more flexible that system will be to meet the challenges of the future. But each option incorporated into a system design increases the overall cost. That's why Dahlgren considers the ability to accurately measure the benefits of flexibility so crucial. Moving Beyond the "Mays" and "Mights" For instance, say you were reviewing the plans for a secure communications system that will serve as the backbone of a communications network for the next decade. Without access to quantifiable ilities data, you might note to the project leader that projections indicate there may be a new technology available in five years that might significantly boost the effectiveness of the system. You might suggest that perhaps the system should be designed to accommodate that future technology. The project leader answers you with a shrug. "May" and "might" and "perhaps" offer her precious little guidance in her decision making. But if you were able to employ Dahlgren's research, you might instead advise the project manager, "There is a 50 percent chance that a new technology will emerge in five years that will increase the performance of the system by 40 percent. Designing the system to accommodate that future technology will increase the budget by 15 percent." The project manager nods and begins slugging numbers into a spread sheet. She now has what she needs to make a sound decision. People, Not Just Projects The benefits of the ilities are not limited to the assembly of technological systems. Valuing flexibility pays dividends when assembling teams of people also, asserts Dahlgren. Attaching an expert to a project works fine as long as the project does not veer from that person's expertise. But if you want to give a project room to roam from its original assumptions, you need to staff it with people who have made the effort to develop wide-ranging skills, people who have invested extra effort in their careers to provide themselves options for growth. "When I interview people now, I look at them a little differently," he says. "Have they tried to develop throughout their careers so that they're not just one-dimensional, but are flexible and adaptable? Have they shown a penchant for being willing to learn? Can they support a variety of future assignments and not just the position they are being interviewed for?" Dahlgren takes a special satisfaction in his research because he says MITRE is the perfect environment in which to study the benefits of the ilities. He's proud that the company has a tradition of building the future needs of its sponsors into every project and has always made a practice of hiring people with a broad range of skills so as to best address the broad range of decisions our sponsors' face. Back to the Garage But what decision should you make on your parking garage? Conveniently, Professor de Neufville actually performed this study for a customer; his analysis helped spawn Dahlgren's study. De Neufville determined that the best decision was to build a three-story garage with a reinforced foundation and columns. That way, if the demographic projections turn out to be sound, you could add five more stories to the garage when the requirements for this capacity have clearly materialized. If the demographic predictions are incorrect, you have minimized the cost of the project. And thanks to a MITRE researcher's expanded insights into the ilities, balancing today's financial and operational realities against tomorrow's projected risks just got a little easier. —by Christopher Lockheardt Related Information Articles and News
Technical Papers and Presentations
Websites |
||||||||||||||||||||
| Page last updated: December 13, 2007 | Top of page |
Solutions That Make a Difference.® |
|
|
