Date of Award

3-11-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Cost Analysis

Department

Department of Systems Engineering and Management

First Advisor

Eric Unger, PhD.

Abstract

Many researchers have sought to identify the sources for cost and schedule growth, most researchers failed to analyze the resource utilization of the cost community. This research explores how the cost community allocates its time. Furthermore, by examining how resources are spent, this research will juxtapose the desires of recent Congressional and Department of Defense policies against the current demands of the cost community. A thorough understanding of resource allocation requires research into the inherent virtualness of the community. Early virtualness predicated the notion of extremes, either virtual or not. However, recent literature expands virtualness into gradients and explains that all teams display some measure of virtualness. Unfortunately, scholars currently debate the basic definition of virtualness either being comprised of three or four individual dimensions. This research uses an internet-based questionnaire to ascertain a measure of virtualness. The findings of this research support a four dimension measure of virtualness. This research uses structural equation modeling to validate and test for good reliability of the created 13 item measure for virtualness. This research finds that resources are largely allocated to the creation and modification of cost estimates, while few resources are spent on the implementation or follow-up of estimates.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GCA-ENV-11-M01

DTIC Accession Number

ADA540017

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