Structured Approach for Business Case Planning of Missile Defense Systems

Current pressures on the Department of Defense (DoD) budget are forcing managers to provide strong business justification for their programs or face serious budget reductions if not cancellations. Programs must prove their value, particularly to the operational elements, both in technical and economic terms. Programs must show that they are cost effective, can be developed, produced, and fielded on schedule, without an excessive amount of program risk, while providing the desired level of performance. In other words, a Business Case must justify that an initiative is an affordable solution that meets cost, schedule, and technical objectives before it is funded. This SBIR addresses this dilemma by investigating MDA policies, procedures, and program documentation, and formulating a methodology to put in place a Robust Business Case Analysis (BCA) process. The approach modifies or enhances the tools in the existing MDA "Investment Analysis" Toolset to build a Robust BCA generation capability. Phase I of this SBIR will demonstrate the feasibility of the "BCA Capability/Data Library" approach and prototype elements of the robust BCA capability's methodology. The Phase II program will fully develop a prototype tool and data library and validate its operation and accuracy.