Abstract. Over the past half-decade, the systems and software engineering communities have experienced a veritable explosion of activity surrounding architectures and their role in developing complex systems. This activity has moved forward on two fundamental fronts: the ability to document an architecture, and the ability to evaluate one. Both of these themes have as their foundation the need for well articulated requirements, a subject which saw tremendous activity in the early part of the last decade. The architecture is the highest level design of a system, and as such is a response to the requirements. How to analyze and develop that response is still in its early stages as a discipline within systems development. This paper addresses a third, largely overlooked, segment of the early systems development cycle called Mission Analysis, and the focus on the solution trade space through the generation of Technical Business Strategies. Making this topic a recognized discipline in its own right will help to focus early system development work in a way that hopefully makes the overall process less reliant on super system architects to produce good solutions for the long run.

Biography. Jeff Shupp is a Principal Systems Engineer and Chief Architect with the Systems Integration Department at Lockheed Martin’s Management and Data Systems operation in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Previously, he was the Enterprise Mission Architect with the Advanced Technology and Architecture group at Vertex, Inc. Before joining Vertex, Mr. Shupp spent 18 years within the Technical Operations group at M&DS in the development of large, complex mission systems. He has 23 years experience developing software systems, first in the Nuclear industry with GE’s Nuclear Business Group, then in the Aerospace and commercial software industries. Mr. Shupp has been a member of INCOSE since 1996. He co-authored and presented a paper in the 1996 INCOSE Symposium based on material he co-authored for a book dealing with Space-Ground Mission Operations. He presented papers again at the 1998 and 2000 Symposiums. Mr. Shupp has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, and a Master’s degree in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.