Adaptable and Adaptive Systems Engineering and Management (AdaptSEM)

Align, define, engage, implement, and evolve; emphasizing the understanding, mastery of the practice, and application of adaptable and adaptive Systems Engineering.

Working Group Overview

Charter: Purpose, Functions, Outcomes

Purpose: The purpose of the Adaptable and Adaptive Systems Engineering and Management Working Group (AdaptSEM WG) is to foster adaptability and adaptivity in systems engineering and its management. This involves understanding, applying, and introducing mechanisms and processes to enable these as capabilities in systems. The AdaptSEM WG aims to develop and exchange knowledge relevant to implementing adaptability and/or adaptivity across the full SE lifecycle. This aligns with INCOSE's strategic objectives and aims to achieve many system characteristics built upon adaptability and adaptivity. 

Main functional areas addressed by the AdaptSEM WG include: 

  1. Develop Knowledge of System(s) Adaptability and Adaptivity: The AdaptSEM WG aims to understand, quantify and develop mechanisms and processes to enable adaptability and adaptivity in systems. This furthers coherent Adaptable and/or Adaptive Systems Engineering and fosters alignment across the Systems community. 

  1. Make Systems Adaptable and Adaptive Throughout SE Lifecycle Activities: The group focuses on addressing the need to manage uncertainties and provide robust and adaptive solutions across the systems lifecycle due to various internal and external factors such as environmental changes, customer needs, market shifts, and technological advancements including implications for strategies, project, program, and portfolio management. This includes optimizing development methods, processes and tools when facing evolving needs and requirements, which address system lifetime sustainability. 

  1. Contribute to Coordinated Transdisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Efforts: The group works to coordinate efforts within and across INCOSE and external stakeholders to develop and exchange knowledge relevant to implementing adaptability and adaptivity as a design factor. 

  1. Address Uncertain Requirements, Adaptable Architecture, and Adaptable System Designs, including Switching Costs: The AdaptSEM WG addresses the challenges of capturing uncertain requirements, adaptable design and emergent costs that occur throughout the product and system lifecycle. These changes play a crucial role in system engineering decisions. 

  1. Develop Standards, Guidelines, and Professional Competencies: The group is involved in developing and applying standards, providing guidelines, and advocating for the development of professional competencies in the areas of adaptability and adaptivity. 

Outcomes (Products/Services): 

The primary goal of the AdaptSEM WG is to develop useful materials and services that will help INCOSE members and their organizations improve systems engineering based on knowledge of system adaptability and/or adaptivity. This includes generating technical and practical knowledge, delivering guidelines and templates, and engaging in outreach and engagement to cohere understanding and application of adaptability and adaptivity. A key objective is to engage in multi working group initiatives to synthesize related efforts and build relationships supporting common areas of interest. 

The AdaptSEM WG will produce a variety of products and services, including: 

  1. Technical and academic papers, guidelines and tools such as primers and how-to pamphlets   

  1. Contributions to practitioner publications such as INSIGHT 

  1. Webinars and tutorials 

  1. Inputs to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) 

  1. Advising industrial and governmental entities 

  1. Management and outreach vehicles such as websites, collaborative venues, and conference presentations 

  1. Meetings to explore and elaborate knowledge areas and engage in information exchange across INCOSE members 

TechOps Domain

Transformation Enablers


Established

2023


Meeting Schedule

Every third Thursday of the month. 

Chair

Haifeng Zhu

Co-Chair

Ray Barton

John Poirier [email protected]

Inquiries

[email protected]

This will email to all chairs

Get Involved and

Access Resources

Use the following link to access chat, files, and other resources:

https://engage.cloud.microsoft/main/org/incose.net/groups/eyJfdHlwZSI6Ikdyb3VwIiwiaWQiOiIxNzI5NjY0MzY4NjQifQ 

AdaptSEM WG Strategy and Approach

Context 

The AdaptSEM WG is a chartered INCOSE functional entity established to advance the understanding, application, practical implementation, and advancement of adaptability and/or adaptivity in systems engineering (SE). It derives its role from the SE Vision 2035, INCOSE strategic objectives, as well as collaborative interactions across INCOSE WGs, the SE community, and the broader systems community. It is a volunteer organization drawing expertise from diverse engineering groups/disciplines, practitioners, scientists, managers, users, and policy makers. It establishes relevance through relationships across global organizations and recognizes the need for cultural, communicative, legal, and environmental alignment. It focuses on policy, process, tools, and services/product development that are inherently useful to improving system adaptability and/or adaptivity via systems engineering in the systems community. 

INCOSE Strategic Objectives: These objectives are the foundation upon which the WG Strategy is derived.

  1. Advance Systems Engineering as the world’s trusted authority. 

  1. Expand the systems engineering community while growing INCOSE. 

  1. Foster professional development and systems engineering competencies. 

  1. Achieve operational excellence. 

INCOSE AdaptSEM WG Strategy 

Simply stated, the AdaptSEM WG strategy is to align, define, engage, implement, and evolve; emphasizing the understanding, mastery of the practice, and application of adaptable and adaptive Systems Engineering. The WG will: 

  • align with INCOSE Strategic objectives to establish focus and actions that ensure system adaptability concepts, tools, and lessons learned are applied in SE and Management. 

  • define a comprehensive, complete, collaborative, consensus-based, congruent, and coordinated approach to ensuring adaptability and adaptivity constructs are understood, communicable across audiences, and actionable.  

  • engage stakeholders internal to INCOSE and across the broader systems community to establish INCOSE as a trusted source for adaptability policies, processes, tools, and services/products.  

  • implement adaptability and adaptivity constructs as technical guidance/products; academically rigorous papers; practitioner relevant papers and guides; tools analysis, assessment and applicability recommendations; and collaborative environments to foster improved information exchange and learning.  

  • evolve based on changes in context, environment, scope/scale of application, and lessons learned. 

Goals/objectives  

As systems are becoming more complex, the ability to address changes in needs, markets and requirements creates uncertainties: adaptability and adaptivity become design considerations requiring additional process thinking. Therefore, within the scope of INCOSEs strategic objectives, the following specific goals and objectives are established: 

  1. Advance Systems Engineering as the world’s trusted authority. The AdaptSEM WG will: 

  • Cohere perspectives on the nature, role, and function of adaptability and/or adaptivity as it relates to systems engineering practices.  

  • Ensure that the SE BOK reflects a synthesized description of adaptability and/or adaptivity and guidance for its implementation through engagement across INCOSE WGs and the broader community.  

  • Foster advocacy of adaptability and/or adaptivity constructs through technical papers and products.  

  • Establish a foundation for collaborative engagement via its websites, conferences, technical exchanges and development of primers and how-to guidance relevant to different audiences.  

  • Ensure that conflicts and differences across other organizations are mitigated and work to establish INCOSE as a consensus body that is authoritative.  

  • Foster engagement across organizations to establish INCOSE as a mechanism to resolve differences and maintain an authoritative reference source in conjunction with other authorities in their respective spheres. 

  1. Expand the systems engineering community while growing INCOSE. The AdaptSEM WG will: 

  • Identify adaptability and/or adaptivity concepts and constructs across diverse communities and determine applicability to SE 

  • Construct a model, architectural foundation, and language to translate perspectives and determine where SE can be applied in other communities 

  • Elicit scientific knowledge from the systems science and other communities as it can be applied to SE and related areas in politics, economics, sociology, psychology, and other fields 

  • Engage management, financial, and other fields to establish a mechanism for application of SE methodology 

  1. Foster professional development and systems engineering competencies. The AdaptSEM WG will: 

  • Develop tutorials, educational materials, and information/knowledge exchange opportunities for new, existing, and potential members. 

  • Determine opportunities for certifications 

  • Expand perspectives through engagement and assimilation of other WG activities and strategies 

  • Coalesce a body of competencies for inclusion in a catalog of broader SE competencies 

  • Determine translation mechanisms for adaptability and/or adaptivity constructs to other fields of application 

  1. Achieve operational excellence. The AdaptSEM WG will: 

  • Engage with INCOSE leadership to ensure alignment of purpose and function within broader INCOSE efforts 

  • Improve understanding of centralized guidance and facilitate decentralized execution/ implementation at the WG level 

  • Gain efficiencies through cross WG interactions to include shared venues for information exchange, integrated product/process development, and links to repositories 

  • Collect data, lessons learned, and process insights to develop recommendations for leadership. 

Key Outcome Areas 



  1. Technical Alignment. This set of activities will structure the body of knowledge for adaptability and/or adaptivity in SE as an ontological foundation including development of academic papers, models, and guidance (including primers and standardization) 

  1. Services/Products. This set of activities will establish a catalog of things that the WG can/will provide including access to experts, development of research efforts, technical papers, models, primers, and practical implementation guides. 

  1. Collaboration mechanisms. This set of activities will instantiate and evolve website, Teams and other environments to foster information exchange, knowledge capture, planning, and integration of other tools. 

  1. Outreach/Engagement. This set of activities will define an engagement plan with other WGs, external stakeholders, and relatable organizations to foster awareness, value, and use of INCOSE AdaptSEM WG outputs. 

Recent Accomplishments

Co-organized Complex Adaptive Systems Conference 2025 at MIT, March 2025

https://sites.mit.edu/cas2025/ 

 


Upcoming Activity

16 October 2025 Meeting in Two Sessions:

Option 1: 0600 US ET

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MmQwYzRmMTQtZGUxYy00NWE1LThlZjAtMDBjN2NhNDBhMGI5%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%223523a793-0e50-4646-b80b-25d83bd7f296%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%221ca8d2ab-71c1-42ea-a716-5d3771b9cf64%22%7d 

Option 2: 1200 US ET

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YWE3NGYzZmYtNmZlMy00NzVhLTkxYmQtZWYxZmVhZGNjZDU0%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%223523a793-0e50-4646-b80b-25d83bd7f296%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%221ca8d2ab-71c1-42ea-a716-5d3771b9cf64%22%7d 

 

 

 

A Starting Point: Foundations

Since 2011, System Adaptability research and usages has made significant progress, as well as forming a branch of Systems Engineering (SE) that focuses on characterizing system adaptability and using adaptation techniques to solve SE issues and enabling adaptivity. The basic result summary is available in SEBoK (https://sebokwiki.org/wiki/System_Adaptability ) and the above figure.


However, many needs from other disciplines to address adaptability in their contexts are not being met.   A need for adaptable system designs emerges across many working groups in their attempts to make systems adaptable (to changes) and more sustainable.



The INCOSE AdaptSEM promotes public knowledge sharing to address the needs for adaptable and adaptive systems and related issues across Systems Engineering and other disciplines.  Applicable topic areas include adaptability usages in risk management (Risk Management workgroup) and procurement (PM-SE workgroup), uncertain requirement captures in agile process (Agile workgroup, Systems of Systems workgroup), adaptable career development (social science effort), extended service lives (sustainability effort), and in fundamental or core theory for Systems Engineering (SE Fundamentals workstream in FuSE). 



As summarized in the SEBoK, adaptability is related with several other concepts which are not the same as adaptability.  For example, flexible design (largely developed in industrial engineering) often requires up-front investment and justification of redundant designs, while system adaptability factor potential changes into current design choices for reduction of unnecessarily redundant designs.  Resilience focuses on reactions triggered by adverse events (https://sebokwiki.org/wiki/System_Resilience ) while adaptability focuses on solutions for changes caused by either adversarial or beneficial events.  Reuses sometimes help adaptability which however has its clear quantification for tradeoffs without high upfront investment.

Classical Technical Resources

Classical Technical Resources that people frequently asked for:

  • Useful resources on Adaptability concept, metric and method of architecture optimization:

Zhu, H., Murray, B., de Weck, O., Skelding, R., Shougarian, N., Zeidner, L., & Arnold, E. (2016, July). Adaptability Metric Analysis for Multi‐Mission Design of Manufactured Products and Systems. In INCOSE International Symposium (Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 2316-2330).

  • Useful resources on Switching Costs

Zhu, H. (2018, July). Developing Case‐Based Costs Estimation: A Recursive Approach and Case Study. In INCOSE International Symposium (Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 1362-1374).

Alstad, J. P. (2019). Development of COSYSMO 3.0: An Extended, Unified Cost Estimating Model for Systems Engineering. Procedia Computer Science, 153, 55-62.

Zhu, H., Hemenway, J. M., Wang, G., & Agarwal, N. K. (2024, July). Model‐Based Switching Costs. In INCOSE International Symposium (Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 1964-1979).

 

 

 

 
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