Editor's Corner
The Project
The Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering Project (BKCASE) started in fall 2009 to create a community-based Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) and a Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE). (Please see http://www.bkcase.org for more information.) The SEBoK sprang out of a recognition that the systems engineering (SE) discipline could benefit greatly by having a living authoritative guide to what is included in the discipline, how the discipline should be structured to facilitate understanding, and what are its most important readings.
Through the end of 2012, BKCASE was led by Stevens Institute of Technology and the Naval Postgraduate School in coordination with several professional societies and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), which provided generous funding. Volunteers from dozens of companies, universities, and professional societies across 10 countries contributed many thousands of hours writing the SEBoK articles. For additional information on the BKCASE authors, please see the Acknowledgements article. The scale and complexity of BKCASE emerged over the first few months. Systems engineering is large and relatively immature when compared to more classic engineering disciplines such as electrical and mechanical engineering. We are extremely pleased with how the community rose to the challenge. New authors continually stepped up when holes in the writing team were identified and we routinely assembled 25 to 30 authors every three months in a multi-day workshop to iron out issues and make key decisions.
One of the most critical decisions occurred in January 2011 when the team confirmed a switch to a wiki-based presentation for the body of knowledge. This added a lot to the complexity of the effort, but offered great advantage in modularity for update, access to interim material by the authors, easy review and suggestions for improvements, and flexible navigation. In hindsight, the impact of choosing a wiki was much greater than we understood, but we are very happy we went down that path. We believe this format to present the body of knowledge will serve the SE community much better than if we had produced a traditional PDF or Word document.
To help ensure both the quality of the SEBoK and its acceptance by the community, it was vital that the SEBoK be created with an open collaborative process. Specifically, each version had public review and each review comment was adjudicated. The adjudication results can be found at SEBoK Review and Adjudication.
The earliest value of the SEBoK has simply been the greater sense of community that has developed among the authors, which include many fellows of professional societies and other leaders in the field. For example, the relationship between Systems Science and Systems Engineering is now more clearly understood than in the past. This relationship is captured in Parts 2 and 3 of the SEBoK.
The greater value of the SEBoK, of course, comes from use by the community. As of the end of March 2013, SEBoK articles have been accessed more than 100,000 times and early usage reports are encouraging. If the SEBoK, it will be used by thousands of systems engineers around the world as they undertake such activities as creating systems architectures, developing career paths for systems engineers, and deciding new curricula for systems engineering university programs.
The SEBoK is intended to evolve and morph with use and with changes in the field. The wiki structure is particularly well suited for that purpose. Users are asked to comment about what they like and dislike, what is missing and what should be removed. New articles will be added and existing articles updated regularly. We welcome your contributions to the SEBoK. Please post your suggestions using the DISQUS feature on each article or send us an email at bkcase@stevens.edu.
Around the world, many universities have launched undergraduate and graduate SE programs and numerous companies and government agencies have defined SE competency models and career paths. However, there are many differences in style and substance between university program curricula, career path models and competency models around the world. The SEBoK and GRCSE products will provide a framework for understanding the similarities and differences in these programs and helping to enable many arbitrary differences to gradually disappear.
Impact
The SEBoK authors believe that the scale of the effort to create the SEBoK, together with the open collaborative process used to write it, will itself have positive effects on the community. The author team includes official INCOSE representatives and Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and Systems Council representatives, and members of other national and international SE bodies. The effort has included extensive awareness initiatives and an open review process. Through these initiatives, the SEBoK is building consensus on the boundaries and context of systems engineering thinking, including its interfaces to three strongly related disciplines – software engineering (SwE), project management (PM), and industrial engineering (IE). The SEBoK is intended not only to inform practicing systems engineers, but also to develop a common way to refer to systems engineering knowledge, facilitate communication among systems engineers, and provide a baseline for creating and evolving competency models, certification programs, educational programs, and other workforce development initiatives around the world.
Ongoing Stewardship
The BKCASE project leadership continues to work with the leadership of INCOSE and the IEEE Computer Society with the expectation that these organizations will take joint stewardship of the SEBoK together with the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC). Stevens Institute of Technology and the Naval Postgraduate School, which currently lead BKCASE, will continue to be represented through the SERC. A committee with representatives from INCOSE, the IEEE Computer Society, and BKCASE leadership is currently finalizing an agreement that specifies governance of both the SEBoK and GRCSE. Although that agreement is still being finalized as of the date of this release, BKCASE is operating under the provisions of the current draft agreement.
A key principle of the BKCASE project is that all of its products will be available free worldwide in perpetuity – including revisions to those products. That principle will be preserved in any agreement between INCOSE, the IEEE Computer Society, and the SERC to become stewards of the SEBoK and GRCSE.
Version 1.1
This version, released 30 April 2013, is a minor release which updates many topic articles and glossary articles.
Changes made include:
- Fourteen topic articles total in Parts 1, 2, 3, and 6 were updated, often to expand or improve the explanation of the topic, in other cases to add new references.
- Sixteen glossary terms were updated and two new glossary terms were added.
- The Acknowledgements page was updated to reflect a significantly revised governance structure for the SEBoK which added many new contributors in varying roles.
- The Main Page, this page, and others have been modified to reflect the new version.
- The SEBoK Evolution page was updated extensively to reflect the new governance structure, plans for SEBoK 1.2, and the expected release of a separate SEBoK sandbox wiki, which will allow anyone in the community to make changes to existing articles or to submit new articles.
- Other small updates were made in many of the administrative pages.
There were no changes to improve wiki navigation and operation. Comments from version 1.0.1 that were adjudicated were deleted from DISQUS. Comments still to be adjudicated remain in the wiki.
Anticipated Updates
As of publication, the stewards plan to regularly update the SEBoK to correct errors, improve existing articles, add new articles, and respond to specific comments from the user community. The current plan is to issue occasional micro updates and two minor updates a year for the first two years, and then decide whether a larger more major revision is needed in the third year or whether additional micro and minor revisions are adequate. Micro updates will be identified by three digits - version 1.x.y. Version 1.0.1 was the first micro update. Minor updates will be versions 1.1, 1.2, etc., while the first major update will be version 2.0.
This version 1.1 is the first minor update. The next minor update is anticipated for fall of 2013.
Micro updates correct spelling errors and sentence grammar and make other very modest changes, and are not scheduled.
Minor updates will correct errors, continue to add content to existing articles including references published recently, and perhaps add articles to existing knowledge areas. Minor updates will not change the basic organization of the SEBoK. The editors may not respond to all comments posted in DISQUS for the minor updates.
Major updates will be unconstrained. All accumulated comments and suggestions will be adjudicated for the major updates, and the adjudication results will be posted for the community.
Updates are under the control of a Governing Board appointed by the stewards, who oversee the SEBoK Editor-in-Chief, Co-Editor-in-Chief, and an Editorial Board. The stewards contribute resources to manage the SEBoK wiki and to support its updates. Volunteer authors from the world-wide SE community contintue to propose new content and other volunteers review that new content.
Version 1.2
The editors plan to add new articles for version 1.2, including one on Systems Engineering Education for Part 5. The editors also plan to have implemented the process for updating references systematically, and will include references published since version 1.0 as appropriate to each article.
This version will also consider user-suggested content in the Sandbox, as well as comments made in Disqus.'
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SEBoK Discussion
Please provide your comments and feedback on the SEBoK below. You will need to log in to DISQUS using an existing account (e.g. Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or create a DISQUS account. Simply type your comment in the text field below and DISQUS will guide you through the login or registration steps. Feedback will be archived and used for future updates to the SEBoK. If you provided a comment that is no longer listed, that comment has been adjudicated. You can view adjudication for comments submitted prior to SEBoK v. 1.0 at SEBoK Review and Adjudication. Later comments are addressed and changes are summarized in the Letter from the Editor and Acknowledgements and Release History.
If you would like to provide edits on this article, recommend new content, or make comments on the SEBoK as a whole, please see the SEBoK Sandbox.
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