ANSI/EIA 632 as a standardized WBS for COSYSMO

This paper provides an update on the systems engineering model (COSYSMO) being developed by the Center for Software Engineering at the University of Southern California in conjunction with its corporate affiliates and the International Council for Systems Engineering (INCOSE). The model will help organizations better estimate and plan their systems engineering activities that include development, integration, and test. In this light, the COSYSMO working group has focused on establishing the scope of the model through the ANSI/EIA 632 Systems Engineering standard. It was recognized early on that systems engineering activities varied extensively across organizations and projects. The key to collecting consistent data across disparate organizations was to clearly define the content in a WBS that was understandable by the systems engineering and cost estimation communities. Mappings have also established between each organization's or project's WBS elements and the COSYSMO standard WBS elements. The standardized WBS has become the framework for discussion of what systems engineering activities are included and excluded for a particular cost estimate. The paper will cover systems engineering and industry standards, the use of these standards in the COSYSMO model development process, and an analysis of the distribution of ANSI/EIA 632 activities covered in COSYSMO.