Systems Engineering Management in Research and Development Valley of Death

A failure of a great many early research and development programs is the result of encountering the traditional valley of death that shadows early research and technology development. The elements that create the valley of death leads to research and technology development high risk and poor return on investment for a great many research and development organizations. This leads eventually to avoiding research and technology development all together because the organizations cannot viably manage the outcome of their early-stage research and development (ESR&D) efforts. Unfortunately, there are few established frameworks and processes for enabling smooth transitions to avoid failure and manage risk across fundamental research, applied research, development, and productization. Many leaders, program managers, and scientists are unwilling to involve systems engineering because of the perception that systems engineering is heavily process oriented, adds unnecessary costs, and should be applied only to mature technologies. The value of systems engineering as applied to ESR&D is unclear to these key individuals. The unfortunate result is that systems engineering is not applied to ESR&D. This article discusses the potential of application of systems engineering to ESR&D to improve return on investment and decrease risk.