Enabling Businesses and Enterprises

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To enable systems engineering within a business or enterprise (hereafter just called "business" as a shorthand because a business is a specific type of enterprise that usually has sufficiently strong central authority and motivation to take steps to enable systems engineering (SE)), the business could establish a strong central governance approach to how SE is managed across its various components, projects, programs, and teams; e.g., the business could mandate a standard SE process, career path, technical authority, and toolset to be used by all systems engineers in the business. Clearly, the feasibility of that approach would depend on the authority of the business management. Some businesses have sufficiently centralized authority that such a mandate could be issued, supported, and enforced. For others with decentralized authority, this would not be possible or practical. At the other extreme, the business could allow each component and team to establish its own way in governing SE, making independent decisions about process, career path, technical authority, and toolsets. Most large businesses use a blend of approaches that fit the culture, context, purpose, and personalities of the business. A business is itself a system and can benefit from being viewed that way. The information on systems offered throughout the SEBoK can help enable a business to better perform SE.

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Topics

This knowledge area contains the following topics:

Businesses usually adopt or enhance their SE capability for one of four reasons:

  • To do current business better (typically a combination of faster, better, cheaper)
  • To respond to a disruption in the market place requiring them to change the way they do business - a competitive threat or new demands from customers
  • To reposition the business in its value chain or open up a new market
  • To develop a new generation product or service.

Logical flow between topics

The way in which they enable SE should be driven by those reasons, tempered by the context, culture, and other factors in which the business operates.

One illustrative flow between the topics is shown in the Figure 1 diagram, which is essentially a "plan-do-check-act" cycle (Deming 1994).

Figure 1. Concept Map for Businesses and Enterprises Topics (Figure Developed for BKCASE)

Analyze Needs

Organize to Perform

Perform Systems Engineering

Assess Performance; Determine Gaps Versus Needs

Develop Business/Enterprise Capability

If there is a gap between actual and needed capabilities, measures are taken to develop or improve the capabilities using the available levers to:

  • Develop, redeploy or obtain new facilities, tools, services, and individuals;
  • Improve culture;
  • Adjust organization;
  • Adjust and align measures, goals and incentives;
  • Adjust the definition of the required capabilities;
  • If necessary, renegotiate scope, context, purpose, responsibility and accountability.

(See Developing Systems Engineering Capabilities within Businesses and Enterprises)

Businesses vary enormously in purpose, scope, size, culture and history. The way the business prepares to perform Systems Engineering needs to be tailored according to the specific situation and will depend greatly on the level of understanding of the added value of systems engineering, as well as the organization's maturity and homogeneity.

This Knowledge Area discusses the implementation of SE in business and in enterprise , and is also relevant to extended enterprises and to projects that involve multiple organizations. This latter case is a particularly difficult challenge because the teams within the project have duties both to the project and to their parent business and enterprise, and must fit into both cultures and process environments.

The detailed topics in this Knowledge Area go into further detail on how a business determines and prioritizes the SE capabilities it needs (Deciding on Desired Systems Engineering Capabilities within Businesses and Enterprises), organizes to do Systems Engineering and integrates SE with its other functions (Organizing Business and Enterprises to Perform Systems Engineering), assesses SE performance (Assessing Systems Engineering Performance of Business and Enterprises), develops and improves its capabilities through organizational learning (Developing Systems Engineering Capabilities within Businesses and Enterprises) and the impact of Culture.

Goals, Measures and Alignment in an Organization

The alignment of goals and measures across the business strongly affects the effectiveness of SE effort and the benefit delivered by SE to the business. For example:

  • (Blockley, D. and P. Godfrey. 2000) describes techniques used successfully to deliver a major infrastructure contract on time and within budget, in an industry normally plagued by adversarial behavior.
  • Lean thinking (Womack and Jones 2003; Oppenheim et al. 2010) provides a powerful technique for aligning purpose to customer value – provided the enterprise boundary is chosen correctly and considers the whole value stream.
  • (Fasser, Y. and Brettner, D. 2002, 18-19) sees an organization as a system, and advocate three principles for organizational design: “increasing value for the ultimate customer”, “strict discipline”, and “simplicity”.
  • EIA 632 (EIA 1999) advocates managing all the aspects required for through-life cycle success of each element of the system as an integrated “building block”. Similarly, (Blockley 2010) suggests that taking a holistic view of “a system as a process” allows a more coherent and more successful approach to organization and system design, considering each element both as part of a bigger system of interest and as a “whole system” (a “holon”) in its own right.
  • (Elliott et al. 2007) advocates six guiding principles for making systems that work: “debate, define, revise and pursue the purpose”; “think holistic”; "follow a systematic procedure”; "be creative”; "take account of the people”; and “manage the project and the relationships."

References

Works Cited

ANSI/EIA. 2003. Processes for Engineering a System. Philadelphia, PA, USA: American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/Electronic Industries Association (EIA). ANSI/EIA 632‐1998.

Blockley,D. and Godfrey, P. 2000. Doing It Differently – Systems For Rethinking Construction. London, UK: Thomas Telford, Ltd.

Deming, W.E. 1994. The New Economics. Cambridge, MA, USA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Centre for Advanced Educational Services.

Elliott, C. et al. 2007. Creating Systems That Work – Principles of Engineering Systems for The 21st Century. London, UK: Royal Academy of Engineering. Accessed September 2, 2011. Available at http://www.raeng.org.uk/education/vps/pdf/RAE_Systems_Report.pdf .

Fasser, Y. and D. Brettner. 2002. Management for Quality in High-Technology Enterprises. Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons-Interscience.

Farncombe, A. and H. Woodcock. 2009. "Enabling Systems Engineering". Z-2 Guide, Issue 2.0. Somerset, UK: INCOSE UK Chapter. March, 2009. Accessed September 2, 2011. Available at http://www.incoseonline.org.uk/Documents/zGuides/Z2_Enabling_SE.pdf.

Farncombe, A. and H. Woodcock 2009. "Why Invest in Systems Engineering". Z-3 Guide, Issue 3.0. Somerset, UK: INCOSE UK Chapter. March 2009. Accessed September 2, 2011. Available at http://www.incoseonline.org.uk/Documents/zGuides/Z3_Why_invest_in_SE.pdf.

Oppenheim, B., E.M. Murman, D.A. Secor. 2010. Lean Enablers for Systems Engineering. Systems Engineering. 14(1): 29-55. Accessed on September 14, 2011. Available at http://cse.lmu.edu/Assets/Lean+Enablers.pdf.

Womack, J. and D. Jones. 2003. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised Edition. New York, NY, USA: Simon & Schuster.

Primary References

Blockley,D. and Godfrey, P. 2000. Doing It Differently – Systems For Rethinking Construction. London, UK: Thomas Telford, Ltd.

Additional References

INCOSE. 2011. Systems Engineering Handbook: A Guide for System Life Cycle Processes and Activities, version 3.2.1. San Diego, CA, USA: International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), INCOSE-TP-2003-002-03.2.1.

ISO/IEC 2008. Systems and Software Engineering -- System Life Cycle Processes. Geneva, Switzerland: International Organisation for Standardisation / International Electrotechnical Commissions. ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2008.

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