Editor's Corner
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Overview
BKCASE (pronounced "Bookcase") is the acronym for the Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering project. The BKCASE team is developing two products, a Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) and a Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE).
The current content of sebokwiki.org represents version 0.5 of the SEBoK. To be clear:
- The SEBoK is not the compendium of all systems engineering knowledge; instead, in its final form it is intended to be the definitive guide to systems engineering (SE) knowledge. To this end, each article has been intentionally limited to about 2000 words (not including references or tables).
- The materials in version 0.5 should not be considered final. Some parts of the SEBoK are more mature (e.g. Part 2: Systems) than other parts of the SEBoK which are new to version 0.5 (e.g. Part 4: Applications of Systems Engineering and Part 6: Related Disciplines).
- Some articles are quite sparse (and reviewer feedback is especially appreciated) and some articles contain a wealth of information.
Version 0.5 is intended to provide the public SE community a view into the state of the SEBoK product to be released in version 1.0 in September 2012, and to solicit comments from the community to improve the final content of version 1.0. The ideal outcome is that the SEBoK will be supported worldwide by the SE community as the authoritative BoK for the SE discipline.
State of the SEBoK
Summarizing the current state of the SEBoK at this point, the SEBoK team believes:
- The document is much more mature than version 0.25. The quality of the writing, the choice of topics, the architecture of the SEBoK, the completeness of the writing are all much better than version 0.25. The author team is quite proud of how far the SEBoK has come. Yet, the choice of version "0.5" does reflect the fact that much more work remains before the SEBoK will be fully ready for broad use and adoption.
- The architecture of the SEBoK into parts, knowledge areas, and topics is fundamentally correct and will persist in version 1.0, although there will likely be some adjustments.
- The choice of primary references - the most important readings in the field - is immature. Reviewer feedback to help mature those choices is especially vital.
- Integration among articles is much better than in version 0.25, but much remains to be done.
- Even though the articles in the wiki have been edited, there are still many shortcomings in the writing. Nevertheless, version 0.5 captures extremely valuable information about the field, and provides a solid foundation for the final version.
- The newly added Part describing the relationship between systems engineering and other disciplines, such as software engineering, is relatively immature (see Part 6). Reviewer feedback on how to best capture those relationships will be especially valuable.
- Moving to a wiki environment for the development and delivery of the SEBoK has been a huge step for the authors, but well worth it.
Reviewers will provide an external check on these beliefs.
About the Review Process
This is the second phase of SEBoK reviews. The first review of version 0.25 was completed with a limited audience of reviewers in Fall 2010.
The second review of version 0.5 is open to the public and is to be completed in the Fall 2011; the deadline for reviewer comments is December 15, 2011.
In version 0.25, the guide was presented as a PDF document with sixteen chapters. Version 0.5 is presented in this wiki with seven major parts, 29 knowledge areas, and about 160 articles with hyperlinks between articles and to a set of primary references, a glossary, and a list of acronyms. (Please see Reading the SEBoK for a detailed explanation of the different article types.) The review of version 0.5 will use the wiki discussion board capability.
The SEBoK version 0.5 review process is intended to provide the SE community an opportunity to comment on the approach, provide feedback on current draft content, provide feedback on the wiki format, and make recommendations about future content and wiki features. The author team recommends that all reviewers read Part 1: SEBoK 0.5 Introduction including the complete set of Part 1 articles, which provide the context for the rest of the materials. In addition, reviewers are encouraged to review the materials most relevant to their current roles or interests.
Based on the magnitude of the authoring effort and the anticipated volume of review comments, an additional version 0.75 release of the SEBoK is now tentatively planned for sometime in spring 2012. This will allow the authors to respond early to the most urgent reviewer feedback, try out improvements in the underlying wiki infrastructure, and to offer significantly more mature articles for selected topics.
Two types of input requested
There are two forms of reviewer feedback:
- Each of the articles has a set of seeded discussions threads. Reviewers should reply to these threads to provide input to the BKCASE team for incorporation into the next SEBoK version. Reviewers will also have the opportunity to reply, in a professional and constructive manner, to other reviewer comments as well.
- The word document SEBoK 0.5 Review Form is provided to collect specific comments on the overall SEBoK and the wiki. Please provide responses by question number and return the document to bkcase@stevens.edu.
Thank you
The opinions and constructive criticism the BKCASE author team receives from you, the reviewer, plays an extremely valuable and important role in the worldwide success and acceptance of SEBoK. If you would like to obtain further project information, please visit the project’s website at bkcase.org and if you have any questions during your review, please contact us at bkcase@stevens.edu.
The BKCASE author team sincerely thanks you for volunteering your time to help us with this important effort.
~The BKCASE Team