Are you confident in the accuracy of your program cost estimate? Will your estimate withstand the scrutiny of an independent cost review? Would you sleep better knowing that your experts’ judgments were properly calibrated prior to the estimate? If so, QUELCE is for you!
Cost overruns in Major Defense Acquisition Programs are common, and studies have implicated poor cost estimation as a contributor. MDAP programs expect several submissions to achieve independent cost-estimate approval, resulting in delays of 3 to 6 months or more. The GAO has reported that cost overrun growth in the DoD R&D portfolio amounts to $32 billion in past 5 years. Factors associated with poor cost estimates include
In this tutorial, we teach the steps of a novel cost estimation method called Quantifying Uncertainty in Early Lifecycle Cost Estimation (QUELCE). QUELCE synthesizes several future-scenario techniques into an estimation method that quantifies domain-specific uncertainties, allows subjective inputs by experts, visually depicts relationships among sources of uncertainty, plugs into the front end of existing cost models, and naturally produces a rich basis of estimate. Although QUELCE digests greater program execution information than traditional estimation tools, it leverages techniques to limit the explosion of complex, interacting, and cascading program change drivers for a more tractable cost estimate.
