An Empirical Study of Critical Success Factors for Use of Immersive Virtual Environments for Crowdsourcing

The diffusion of high level graphics engines on standard personal computers and advances in virtual environments have created an opportunity for defense acquisition. The defense acquisition enterprise is currently searching for innovation in both process and methods and has acknowledged failures in attempts to develop critical weapon systems. It is believed that enhanced collaboration and innovation during the design and acquisition cycle will enable more successful weapon systems. This exploratory mixed-methods research identified critical success factors in five key areas using an expert panel and the Delphi method. The key areas include; Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), Crowdsourcing, Virtual Environments (VE), Human Systems Integration (HSI), and the overall process. The innovative process developed, based on the research, allowed virtual environments and MBSE methods to enhance and expand the interaction between warfighters and DoD scientists/engineers. The critical success factors identified provide focus for an overall process to crowdsource innovative design concepts and enable enhanced design success. The results of this research can be used by defense policymakers, chief systems engineers and acquisition professionals to enhance the utilization of MBSE and virtual environments. Additionally, the research explained how to modify, enhance and expand the overall design process to produce innovative weapon systems tailored to fulfill the requirements of the warfighters. This results of this study indicated that MBSE is valuable and essential to crowdsourcing from warfighters and stakeholders in the acquisition process. Moreover, the expert panel agreed on the critical success factors and reached moderate but statistically significant consensus on the ranking of these factors in five areas.

Author

• Romanczuk, Glenn Edward

Language

• English

Keyword

• Virtual Environments
• Defense Acquisition
• Critical Succcess Factors
• model based systems engineering
• Delphi
• crowdsourcing

Date created

• 2017

Type of Work

• Dissertation

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Systems Engineering

Degree

• Ph.D.

Advisor

• Willy, Christopher J
• Murphree, E. Liles

Committee Member(s)

• Olson, Bill A.
• Mazzuchi, Thomas A.
• Sarkani, Sharam
• Bischoff, John E.

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/1c18dg726