6.2.6 ENGINEERING - EFFORT AND EFFI

6.2.6 ENGINEERING - EFFORT AND EFFICACY OF TECHNICAL PERSONNEL COMPONENT
The purpose of the Engineering (Effort and Efficacy of Technical Personnel) component is simply to collect information from various sources in the model and output the total capacity of the in-house workforce to perform development work in areas of technology development, system integration, and system development.

6.2.7 SAFETY AND MISSION ASSURANCE - EFFORT AND EFFICACY OF SYSTEM SAFETY
ANALYSTS (EESSA) COMPONENT
The focus of the Safety and Mission Assurance component is on the effort and efficacy of in-
house employees working on safety analyses. The purpose of the component is to determine
the capacity of safety analysts to work hand-in-hand with other engineers and technical people
in order to produce high-quality, useful safety information to be used in making design
decisions.


6.3 INTEGRATED ESMD MODEL OVERVIEW
The final model is made up of a large number (many hundreds) of feedback loops that cut across individual model components. Some of those feedback loops are generic and were introduced in chapter 2 (see Figure 25 for an example). For example, Figure 101 shows a schematic explaining how the management pressure feedback loops influence system development as progress reports are communicated upwards through feedback channels, and multiple layers of management and administration attempt to ensure that the project meet requirements while remaining within acceptable budget and schedule.













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Figure 101: Management pressure feedback loops reproduced through component interactions

As another example, Figure 102 shows a schematic explaining how some of the previously
introduced feedback loops are reproduced across components and impact system safety. The
management pressure loops of Figure 101 are very important to ensure that the system is
developed without catastrophic disruptions in cost and schedule. However, as Figure 102
shows, excessive management pressures have negative side effects that may impact system
safety. As too much pressure is applied toward getting development done on time, safety
becomes an effectively lesser priority. Resources may be re-allocated from safety analysis
toward design completion, budget cuts may be directed toward safety or safety analyses that
can delay design completion may be ignored. All of these factors end up negatively
impacting the final safety of the system. One of the interviewees nicely summarized the
interaction of schedule pressure and design flaws in this comment:


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“Schedule pressure is not a bad thing if it’s applied right. Schedule pressure is necessary, so it’s a positive thing too. People don’t produce as well without schedule pressure. It’s a matter of when the schedule pressure goes over the edge, and your fraction of tasks with flaws goes up too high. It’s almost like an exponential curve, for a long time, the effect is not too bad, but when schedule pressure is too high, people just give, and they say, whatever you want, you got, you want that thing out the door, you got it. Productivity increases with schedule pressure, but flaws increase too.”











-
Effective Safety
Priority







Unsatisfied Safety












+
+
Schedule and
Cost Pressure



















+

+
Safety Effort
and Efficacy

Requirements and
Operational
+ Workarounds
-System
Safety

- Schedule Delays
and Cost Overruns
+



Figure 102: Interplay of schedule pressure and system safety
Another interviewee explained how effective safety priority may simply change over time:

“That (Management Safety Priority) variable does change over time. For the
folks working system safety, the priority does not change but as an overall
agency focus, it changes. Safety is always priority one, but then again when you


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