Webinar 15:00 UTC: "The Need for More Engagement of Systems Engineering with Integration & Test"

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INCOSE Webinar: "The Need for More Engagement of Systems Engineering with Integration & Test"

 

Date:  19 June 2013

Time: 15:00 UTC/ 11am EDT

Presenter(s): William D. Miller

General Webinar Details: Webinar 53 

 

This presentation addresses the need for more engagement of systems engineering with integration & test. The INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook version 3.2.2 published in October 2011 has five percent of its content covering integration, verification, transition and validation.  ISO/IEC 15288:2008 – Systems and software engineering – System life cycle processes is lite on these technical processes with generic descriptions to plan and execute.

A survey of papers from INCOSE symposia and the Journal of Systems Engineering shows the preponderance focused on the upper left part of the systems engineering V-model, i.e., requirements and architecture, and much less on the right-hand side of the V-model, i.e., integration, verification, transition and validation. The same is true of the preponderance of activity in the Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) initiative, especially in the application of the Systems Modeling Language (SysML). The basis of this may be that the systems engineering boundary is centered on the upper left of the V-model by policies, processes, and methods in the majority of organizations with separate staff responsible for integration & test. Often, system validation is performed independently from the developing organization.

Evidence of the need for more engagement with integration& test is based on 1) a systemic occurrence of a large fraction of requirements being unverifiable, 2) a focus on sunny day requirements and paucity of rainy day requirements, 3) brittle architectures, and 4) a pattern of successful verification events followed by challenged validation events.

It is well established that integration& test consumes significant resources during system development, often finding and fixing problems attributable back to the requirements.  The DARPA META initiative is working towards model-based approaches to prove systems as correct by design to reduce the resources for traditional testing.

Recommendations include 1) verification and validation requirements derived concurrently with the derivation of system requirements, 2) engagement of engineers responsible for integration& test including signing off on requirements and architecture, 3) formal integration planning, 4) engagement of systems engineers in the integration & test, and 5) extending the MBSE paradigm to Model-Based Integration & Test (MBI&T). In particular, integration & test engineers may contribute to the actual derivation of system requirements and architecture that improve system development outcomes. Also, early results from MI&T show improved outcomes.

 

Bill Miller, ASEP, is Executive Principal Analyst, Innovative Decisions, Inc., Vienna, VA USA, and Adjunct Faculty in the School of Systems and Enterprises, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ USA. Bill has been an INCOSE member for 20 years and is currently the INCOSE Technical Director.  He served three terms as INCOSE secretary, is the former secretary of the INCOSE Foundation and was co-chair of the INCOSE Metrics Working Group. He is a member of the IEEE and its Communications Society and Systems Man and Cybernetics Society. Bill has 40 years technical and management experience in commercial telecommunications and government communications systems, including 20 years at Bell Labs.  Bill has BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University.