Affordability Engineering Framework 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 require 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 life cycle. 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 benefits 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.