6.4.1 Adapting SEER Cost Estimating Tools to Evolutionary Acquisition

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has emphasized improvements in acquisition processes. We have found that most of these called for little or no change in our SEER cost models, but a current initiative does seem to call for significant changes. This initiative is called evolutionary acquisition. Evolutionary acquisition shares many features with conventional DoD acquisition methods of the late 20 th century, but does introduce unique features that need to be accounted for in an up‐to‐date cost modeling system. This paper discusses some of the major changes in DoD acquisition practices that have recently been formalized in the DoD 5000 series documents, and how we are responding to them by experimenting with design changes in the SEER tools.