Defeat Entropy: A Guide To Managing Your Model Portfolio

Models enable the DOD Digital Engineering (DE) strategy to support engineering activities throughout the lifecycle. Some organizations have responded by defining a DE implementation plan that addresses their own DE strategy. However, the lack of a standard or guidance that directly addresses managing a collection models has created an “ad-hoc” approach.

This lack of references, guidance, or standards inhibit model integration and model reuse. The Model Portfolio Management (MPM) guide identifies goals and tasks necessary to manage an organization’s portfolio of models. It defines the actions and products to ensure that the collection of models meets organizational needs, has a planned evolution, and meets integration targets. It ensures that risks, quality objectives, and modeling best practices and standards are consistent across the portfolio.

The MPM guide is for all organizational sizes; the driving criteria for use is whether an organization has a collection of models and modeling resources to manage. The guide can help acquirers manage their model libraries, encourage reuse, and provide suppliers a reference for further model development. Acquirers may use the guide as a reference document for requests for proposals to ensure that model management is adequately addressed. Suppliers can organize and communicate their management plans to assure their customers that their model efforts are well-managed, trusted, and designed to meet acquisition objectives.

Implementation of this guide can take many forms. It may start with writing and conducting tasks according to a written organizational MPM plan. Adopting organizations may also establish MPM management tools such as stakeholder agreements, governing bodies, model repositories, or MPM reports, as a few examples. Regardless of the implementation, the guide serves to provide organizations a starting point to develop a plan of action from a compiled list of considerations. The goal is to streamline and organize the management of models across a portfolio so that models are accessible, relevant, and the full breadth of models is known.