Developing Systems Engineering Capabilities within Businesses and Enterprises

The pursuit of continuous improvement is a constant for many organsations. The (Morgan and Liker, 2010) description of Toyota, the Lean principle of “pursue perfection” (Lean Enablers for Systems Engineering, Oppenheim et al, 20010), and the Kotter principle of “don’t let up”, all drive a need for continuous improvement.

The ability to manage teams through their lifecycle - mobilize teams rapidly, establish and tailor an appropriate set of processes, metrics and systems engineering plans, support them to maintain a high level of performance, and capitalize acquired knowledge and redeploy the team members expeditiously as the team winds down - is a key organizational competence that has substantial leverage on project and organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

The business provides project teams with the necessary resource, background information, facilities, cash, support services, etc, and provides a physical, cultural and governance environment in which the projects and teams can be effective. So key functions of the parent organization include generating and maintaining relevant resources, allocating them to projects and teams, providing support and governance functions, maintaining expertise and knowledge (on process, application domain and solution technologies), securing the work in the first place, organizing finance, and maintaining the viability of the organization.

For improvements to really stick, they must reside in the organisation rather than the individuals, so the organsation can endure and not depend on some specific “heroes”. This is reflected in the CMMI progression from a "hero culture" to a "quantitatively managed and optimizing process" - though this process capability augments and does not replace individual talent.

This topic outlines the issues to be considered in capability development and organizational learning.

Overview

The following diagram (also presented in Enabling Businesses and Enterprises to Perform Systems Engineering) shows the "analyse - organize - perform - assess - develop" cycle used to structure this part of the SEBOK. This is essentially a reformulation of the Deming PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) cycle. The analysis step should cover both current and future needs, as far as these can be determined or predicted. Goals and performance assessment, as discussed in Assessing Systems Engineering Performance of Business and Enterprises, can be based on a number of evaluation frameworks, notably

direct measures of business performance and effectiveness
the CMMI capability maturity models.

There is evidence (SEI website) that many organizations find a positive correlation between business performance and CMMI levels.

Change Levers

SE managers have a number of possible change levers they can use to develop SE capabilities.

Different change levers have different time constants to take effect.

Adjust context, scope, purpose, responsibility, accountability of B/E

If the other change levers cannot achieve the desired effect, the business or enterprise may have to renegotiate its contribution to the higher level strategy and mission.

Review and adjust required capabilities

In the initial analysis, the needed capability may have been over- or under-estimated. Each time round the cycle, the need should be re-evaluated to make sure the planning assumptions are still valid.

Adjust organization within B/E

Adjusting organization and responsibilities so that "the right people are doing the right things" and making full use of their knowledge and skills, is often the easiest change to make and the one that may have the quickest effect.

A risk is that too much organizational churn disrupts relationships and can destabilize the organization and damage performance. CMMI Maturity levels and organizational quality approvals can be set back by ill-considered re-organization.

Develop/redeploy/get new resources, services and individuals

Resources, services and individuals may include any of the components of organizational SE capability listed in Organizing Business and Enterprises to Perform Systems Engineering.

Levers include subcontracting elements of the work, improving information flows, upgrading facilities, and launching short-term training and/or long term staff development programs.

Development of individuals is discussed in Enabling Individuals to Perform Systems Engineering.

Improve culture

Culture change is very important, very powerful, but needs to be handled as a long-term game and given long term commitment. (See Culture)

Adjust and improve alignment of measures and metrics

Measurement drives behaviour. "What gets measured gets done". Improving alignment of the goals and incentives of different parts of the organization so that everyone is working to a common purpose can be a very effective and powerful way of improving business and enterprise performance; it does require a top-down holistic approach, considering the business or enterprise as a system with a clear understanding of how the elements of enterprise capability interact to produce synergistic value. (See Assessing Systems Engineering Performance of Business and Enterprises)

It is commonly reported that as organizations move through CMMI levels the approach to metrics and measurement has to evolve. Measures that are important at high CMMI levels are meaningless or unavailable in less mature organizations.

Change methods

Doing everyday things better

There is a wealth of sources / techniques, including Kaizen, Deming PDCA (Deming 1994), Lean (Womack 1998, Oppenheim et al. 2010), 6-Sigma (Harry 1997), and CMMI (SEI, 2010)

Value stream mapping is a powerful Lean technique to find ways to improve flow, and to improve handovers at interfaces.

Managing technology readiness

In high-technology industries, many problems are caused by attempting to transition new technologies into products and systems before the technology is mature, or to make insufficient allowance for the effort required to make the step from technology demonstration to reproducible and dependable performance in a product, or to overestimate the re-usability of an existing product. NASA's TRL (Technology Readiness Level) construct is widely and successfully used to understand and mitigate technology transition risk.

Planned change: standing up or formalizing SE in an organization

Planned change may include: introducing SE to a business (Farncombe et al, 2009); improvement/transformation; formalizing the way a business or project does SE; dealing with a merger/demerger/major re-organization; developing a new generation or disruptive product, system, service or product line (Christensen); entering a new market; and managing project lifecycle transitions: start-up, changing to the next phase of development, transition to manufacture/operation/support, wind down and decommissioning.

CMMI (SEI 2010) is widely used to provide a framework for planned change in a systems engineering context. Planned change needs to take a holistic approach considering people (knowledge, skills, culture, ability and motivation), process, measurement and tools as a coherent whole. It is now widely believed that tools and process are not a substitute for skills and experience but merely provide a framework in which skilled and motivated people can be more effective. So change should start with people not with tools. Before a change is started it is advisable to baseline the current business performance and systems engineering capability, and establish metrics that will show early on whether the change is achieving the desired effect and benefits.

Responding to unforeseen disruption

Unforeseen disruptions may be externally or externally imposed. Externally imposed disruptions may be caused: by the customer - win/lose contract, mandated teaming or redirection; by competitors - current offering becomes less/more competitive, a disruptive innovation may be launched in market; or by Governance and regulatory changes - new processes, certification, safety or environmental standards. Internal or self-induced disruptions may include: a capability drop-out due to loss of people, facilities, financing; product or service failure in operation or disposal; strategy change e.g. new CEO, respond to market dynamics; or a priority over-ride.

Embedding change

In a Systems Engineering context, sustained effort is required to maintain improvements such as higher CMMI levels, Lean and Safety cultures, etc, once they are achieved. There are several useful change models, including Kotter’s 8 phases of change (Kotter 1995): establish a sense of urgency, create a coalition, develop a clear vision, share the vision, empower people to clear obstacles, secure short term wins, consolidate and keep moving, and anchor the change. The first six steps are the easy ones. The Chaos Model (Zuijderhoudt 1990, 2002) draws on complexity theory to show that regression is likely if the short term wins are not consolidated, institutionalized and anchored. This explains the oft-seen phenomenon of organizations indulging in numerous change initiatives, none of which sticks because attention moves on to the next before the previous one is anchored.

A structured survey of improvement and change literature relevant to SE in businesses and enterpises

SE leaders (Directors, functional managers, team leaders and specialists) have responsibilities, and control levers to implement them, that vary depending on their organization’s business model and structure. A great deal of their time and energy is spent managing change in pursuit of short, medium and long term organizational goals: “doing everyday things better”; making change happen, embedding change and delivering the benefit; and coping with the effects of disruptions. Mergers, acquisitions and project start-ups, phase changes, transitions from “discovery” to “delivery” phase, transition to operation, sudden change in level of funding, can all impose abrupt changes on organizations that can destabilize teams, processes, culture and performance. The table below provides links to both the general management literature and specific systems engineering knowledge.

**Table 1** – Change management – business and SE references
Area	Primary “business” references	Primary SE references
Doing every day things better	Kaizen; Lean; 6-Sigma 4 competencies of Learning Organisation – absorb, diffuse, generate, exploit: Sprenger & Ten Have, 1996 Covey’s 7 habits of very effective people	CMMI Forsberg & Moos, Visualizing project mgt INCOSE IEWG products INCOSE Lean Enablers for SE
Dealing with unplanned disruption	Mitroff, managing crises before they happen; Shell, Scenario Planning – Wack, 1985, Ringland, 1988	Scott Jackson, architecting resilient systems
Driving disruptive innovation	Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma Mintzberg “Rise and fall of strategic planning”, HBR 1994, and book of the same name BS7000, Standard for innovation management
Exploiting unexpected opportunities	Mintzberg, rise and fall of strategic planning Mission Command (military), Auftragstechnik	Architecting for Flexibility and Resilience Open system architectures; Lean SE; Agile methodologies
Implementing and embedding planned change	Kotter’s 8 phases of change, Berenschott’s 7 forces Levers of control (Simon 1995) – tension between control, creativity, initiative and risk taking Chaos model, Zuiderhoudt, Wobben, Ten Have, Busato, “complexity theory applied to change processes in organisations”; 1999 Business Process Re-engineering (Hammer & Champy, 1993) Senge’s 5th discipline Change Quadrants (Amsterdam, 1999)	Blockley & Godfrey, doing it differently - systems for rethinking construction INCOSE UK Chapter Z-guides: Z-2, introducing SE to an organisation; Z-7, Systems Thinking
Understanding peoples’ motivation, behaviour	Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Myers-Briggs; NLP Socio-technical organisation Taylor & Felton, 1993 Core quadrants, Offman, 1992, 2001	IEWG – “enthusiasm”, stretch goals Sommerville, Socio Technical Systems Engineering, Responsibility Mapping
Understanding culture	Hofstede, Cultural Dimensions, 1966 - - Etzioni, Compliance Typology
Helping individuals cope with change	5 C’s of individual change, and Rational/emotional axes, Kets De Vries, quoted in “key management models” 2003	Relationships made easy, Fraser, 2010 – rational/emotional, NLP and other methods

References

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NASA, TRL - see Wikipedia, ??

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