LCA Review Description (Spiral System Development Systems Engineering)

The Life Cycle Architecture (LCA) milestone is conducted to stabilize system technical requirements and the architectural & system design, and commit to the next phase of the system life cycle. Stakeholder expectations of the system's functional content are adjusted based on the knowledge gained from risk analysis activities. Representatives of the science and education user communities are selected to serve on the LCA evaluation panel, providing a continuing opportunity for stakeholder engagement and feedback.

The prime focus is on the system technical requirements and detailed design to ensure that risks have been reduced to acceptable levels. Specific presentations will be made on the high risk items, the actions taken to mitigate the risks, results of the risk mitigation activities and the remaining residual risks. Estimates for cost and schedule impacts on baselined system development plans and schedules are presented.

LCA Review Criteria (Spiral System Development Systems Engineering)

• The use cases and concepts of operation are stable and complete
• The baseline architecture is stable and sufficient to meet the critical use cases.
• Stakeholders agree that prototypes demonstrate that all significant risks have been mitigated.
• Construction plans, including cost and schedule estimates, are sufficient to give high confidence that production will succeed.
• The stakeholders agree that the baseline architecture and technology choices meet their needs, and they commit to its construction.
• The actual cost and schedule expenditures are consistent with the Annual Work Plan.
• Meeting minutes are posted to the project web site

The management presentation is the responsibility of the Project Manager. The technical presentation and prototype demonstration are the responsibility of the Senior System Architect with input from the engineering teams.

Artifacts (System Life Cycle Plan)

Each major milestone review is expected to include, at a minimum, the following:

• A management presentation providing an overview of the current project state
• A technical presentation providing an overview of the current project state.
• A configuration-controlled set of artifacts covering engineering and programmatics
• Demonstration of prototypes, subsystems or integrated releases as appropriate

To make the definition and development of the CI system manageable, collections of information are organized into five distinct, persistent artifact sets. These are further divided into a management set and four engineering sets. A given set represents a complete aspect of the system, while an artifact is information that is collected and reviewed as a single entity.

The five artifact sets are:

1. A management set consisting of planning artifacts (e.g., project and system level plans, the Work Breakdown Structure, the Integrated Master Schedule and the Annual Work Plan) and operational artifacts (e.g., release descriptions, risk assessments, engineering change orders and deployment documents)
2. A requirements set consisting of use scenarios, concepts of operations and user, system and subsystem requirements
3. A design set consisting of trade study reports, domain models, architecture descriptions using the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (version 1.5) and prototype reports
4. An implementation set consisting of source code baselines, component executables and associated documentation
5. A deployment set consisting of an integrated and verified release, user documentation and training manuals_

The artifact sets receive different levels of attention at different milestone reviews, commensurate with the activities in the four phases of the system life cycle. Review of the management set is limited to the operational artifacts regarding engineering processes and evolution during the elaboration phase (e.g., Risk Register, generated ECRs, use cases, IT&V Plan), along with plans for the subsequent construction phase. It is expected that the management and requirements sets will be mature, the design set will be mature, the implementation set will be conceptual, and the deployment set will be nascent.

Additional Material

We also (may) have some additional [LCA Review auxiliary material] (not normative).