tives (AoA), and those that may be completed afterward. Associated with most checklist items are brief statements of the benefits that are expected to accrue throughout the program life cycle as a result of properly executing that item, as required in statement of task item D.

The discussion of issues associated with the systems engineering workforce and training, required under statement of task item E, is taken up in Chapter 3. That chapter provides a snapshot of the demographics of the current SE workforce as well as insights into current industry SE programs to help keep DOD programs on time and on budget.

The committee’s policy recommendations on needed changes to law, processes, and resources, required under statement of task item F, are distributed throughout the report as they arise in the context of the discussion in various chapters. These recommendations are presented together in the Summary at the beginning of the report.

In preparing this report, the committee assumed that readers are generally familiar with SE and defense acquisition. The committee included brief definitions and descriptions where appropriate; however, it did not attempt to provide extensive tutorials on these subjects. Doing so would have been well beyond its charter and resources, and extensive literature and online resources already serve that purpose.¹¹