Failure of Current SE Work Briefing - April 2017

Systems Engineering Return on Investmant Presentation

Original Presentation on the need for a SE Maturity Model

This example SEMP establishes the overall plan for the systems engineering management of all Enterprise projects.  The SEMP describes technical planning and control, systems engineering processes, and engineering specialty integration.  It represents the application of systems engineering techniques tailored to Enterprise projects. 

A model is a physical, mathematical, or otherwise logical representation of a system, entity, phenomenon, or process. A simulation is a method for implementing a model over time using operating conditions and inputs.  Models and Simulations (M&S) are Systems Engineering tools used by multiple functional area disciplines during all life-cycle phases.  Modeling is essential to aid in understanding complex systems and system interdependencies and to communicate among team members and customers.  Simulation provides a means to explore concepts, system characteristics, test alternatives, open up the trade space, facilitate informed decisions and assess overall system performance. 

Innumerable studies have concluded that requirements problems are the single biggest contributor to cost overruns, schedule slippages and loss of capability in systems and software projects.  Cost impacts alone of 10%, 20%, 50%, 80% and more are regularly reported by practitioners and researchers.  And yet, the cost of making substantial improvements in requirements quality is considerably lower than these cost impacts, typically 0.1 – 2% of total development cost – if appropriate skills and methods are applied.

Requirements analysis (the capture and validation of requirements through analysis of the problem domain) provides the tools for transforming inadequate requirements into adequate requirements.
 

A formal Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Testability (RAMT) Program Plan is essential for achieving high levels of reliability, testability, maintainability and the resulting system availability and is required to be developed during any Project system development phase (if the Project goes through that phase) and refined over all additional life-cycle phases the Project is contracted to accomplish.  However, a RAMT Program Plan must be developed at any Project life cycle phase if required by contract or is necessary to successfully accomplish the Project work efforts.  It specifies not only what the reliability systems engineer does, but also the tasks performed by other participants (engineers, reliability analyses, etc.  Each Project Reliability Program process developed according to the Enterprise Plan is to be approved by Project Management and the Project Systems Engineer responsible for allocation of resources since resource determination for manpower and budgets for testing and other tasks is critical for a successful program and in general, the amount of work required for implementation of an effective reliability program for complex systems is large.
 

There are a large number of life cycle process models. As discussed in the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge System Life Cycle Process Drivers and Choices article, these models fall into three major categories: (1) primarily pre-specified and sequential processes; (2) primarily evolutionary and concurrent processes (e.g., the rational unified process and various forms of the Vee and spiral models); and (3) primarily interpersonal and unconstrained processes (e.g., agile development, Scrum, extreme programming (XP), the dynamic system development method, and innovation-based processes). The models below outline types 2 and 3.

The purpose of this Metrics Document for Systems Engineering and Product Development is threefold: (1) Capture the experience represented in various Enterprise and Customer projects, (2) Use the knowledge and capabilities of the International Council of Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Metrics Working Group and (3) Determine and use Industry Best Practices on relevant metrics in a Systems Engineering Integrated Product Development (IPD) and Production environment. 

This document addresses benefits, techniques, tailoring, and application of Systems Engineering metrics for Enterprise engineering development and production programs. The objectives are to provide fundamental Systems Engineering metrics constructs, based on understanding system performance and performance in development and production of systems. This document is intended to provide the following:
1. Understanding of Systems Engineering metrics
2. Description of the Systems Engineering metrics process
3. An example tailored Systems Engineering metrics procedure for a specific Project
4. Guidance for tailoring the Systems Engineering metrics to and developing new Systems Engineering metrics for different project or customer requirements