[Editors] MIT predicts performance of complex systems

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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MIT predicts performance of complex systems
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For Immediate Release
THURSDAY, FEB. 1, 2007
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: 617-258-5402
Email: thomson at mit.edu

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Taking a cue from the financial world, MIT 
researchers along with experts in industry and government have 
developed a list of 13 measures that engineers can use to predict how 
well a system--or project--will perform before it is even finished.

Known as leading indicators, analogous measures are regularly used by 
economists, investors and businesses to help predict the economy's 
performance.

The idea behind the new set of leading indicators is to improve the 
management and performance of complex programs before they are 
delivered, in a more predictive way than simple business metrics.

"Leading indicators can provide important insights for managers of 
complex programs, such as those in the aerospace industry, and can 
allow them to make real-time adjustments to project activities, 
staffing and schedules to ensure a project stays on track," said 
Donna Rhodes, a principal researcher for MIT's Lean Aerospace 
Initiative (LAI).

The MIT leading indicators project, co-led by Rhodes and industry 
colleague Garry Roedler of Lockheed Martin, began in 2004 following 
an LAI/U.S. Air Force workshop on systems engineering that 
established the groundwork for the project. Systems engineering is an 
interdisciplinary approach to creating successful systems by focusing 
on variables including customer needs, system requirements, design 
synthesis and system validation, all while considering the complete 
problem.

A leading indicator may be an individual measure, or collection of 
measures, that are predictive of future system performance before the 
performance is realized.

The 13 leading indicators defined by the MIT team include risk 
handling trends.  This indicator would be used by management to 
determine whether a project team is proactively handling potential 
problems (or risks) at the appropriate times with the goal of 
minimizing or eliminating their occurrence. If the actions to address 
a given project risk are not taken, then there is a higher 
probability that the risk will be realized, resulting in negative 
impact to project cost, schedule, performance or customer 
satisfaction. The insight gained through the use of this indicator 
can help identify where additional effort may be needed to avoid 
preventable problems or reduce impacts.

Several major aerospace companies worked to validate the 13 
indicators in pilot programs during 2006, which helped refine them. 
Then, working in collaboration with the International Council on 
Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the leading professional society for 
systems engineering practitioners, the MIT team published a guidance 
document about the work. That document has been made available to the 
larger systems engineering community.

According to Rhodes, "The leading indicators project is an excellent 
example of how academic, government and industry experts can work 
together to perform collaborative research that has real impact on 
engineering practice."

The other leading indicators identified by the team are: system 
definition change; backlog trends; interface trends; requirements 
validation trends; requirements verification trends; work product 
approval trends; review action closure trends; risk exposure trends; 
technology maturity trends; technical measurement trends; systems 
engineering staffing & skills trends; and process compliance trends.

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Written by Michelle Gaseau, MIT Lean Aerospace Initiative

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Elizabeth A. Thomson
Senior Science and Engineering Editor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
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