Difference between revisions of "Enabling Businesses and Enterprises"

Revision as of 17:31, 6 August 2012

Part 5 on Enabling Systems Engineering explores how systems engineering (SE) is enabled at three levels of an organization: the business or enterprise (hereafter usually just called "business" as a shorthand because a business is a specific type of enterprise that has sufficiently strong central authority and motivation to take steps to effectively enable SE. See Enabling Systems Engineering for more on this.), the team, and individuals. The Enabling Businesses and Enterprises to Perform Systems Engineering Knowledge Area describes the knowledge to enable SE at the top level of the organization. Part 3 Systems Engineering and Management describes how to perform SE once it has been enabled using the techniques described in Part 5. A business is itself a system and can benefit from being viewed that way. (See Enterprise Systems Engineering in Part 4.)

To download a PDF of all of Part 5 (including this knowledge area), please click here.

Topics

This knowledge area contains the following topics:

Relationship Among Topics

Systems Engineering Organizational Strategy describes the knowledge about how SE delivers value to the business, who makes decisions about SE in the business, how are those decisions made, how resources are allocated, and how are the soundness and performance of those decisions are monitored.
Determining Needed Systems Engineering Capabilities in Businesses and Enterprises describes how a business decides what specific SE capabilities are needed; e.g., a business that creates cutting edge products would likely require very strong architecting capabilities, including modeling tools; a business that has a global development team would likely need a very robust collaboration toolset
Organizing Business and Enterprises to Perform Systems Engineering describes various organizational models; e.g., which SE functions should be centralized, which should be distributed, how much SE every engineer should know
Assessing Systems Engineering Performance of Business and Enterprises describes how a business understands how well it is doing with respect to the SE actually being performed using the techniques described in Systems Engineering and Management
Developing Systems Engineering Capabilities within Businesses and Enterprises describes how SE talent that delivers the desired SE capabilities is grown and acquired
Finally, Culture describes how the culture of a business affects SE; e.g., a risk-averse business will likely use plan-driven SE processes; an entrepreneurial fast-pace business will likely use agile SE processes (See Life Cycle Models).

To some extent, these topics have the character of a "plan-do-check-act" cycle (Deming 1994), where the "do" part of the cycle is performing SE using the techniques described in Part 3: Systems Engineering and Management. For example, if assessing the business' SE performance shows shortfalls, then additional SE capabilities may need to be developed, the organization may need to be adjusted, processes may need to be improved, etc., all working within the existing cultural norms. If those norms prevent the business from successfully performing SE, then transformational efforts to change the culture may be needed as well.

Goals, Measures and Alignment in a Business

The alignment of goals and measures within the business strongly affects the effectiveness of the SE effort, and the benefit delivered by SE to the business, and needs to be carefully understood. 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."

For organizations new to SE, the INCOSE UK Chapter has published a range of one-page guides on the subject, including http://www.incoseonline.org.uk/Documents/zGuides/Z2_Enabling_SE.pdf (Farncombe and Woodcock 2009) and http://www.incoseonline.org.uk/Documents/zGuides/Z3_Why_invest_in_SE.pdf (Farncombe and Woodcock 2009).

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.

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.

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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@@ Line 14: / Line 14: @@
 ==Relationship Among Topics==
 *[[Systems Engineering Organizational Strategy]] describes the knowledge about how SE delivers value to the business, who makes decisions about SE in the business, how are those decisions made, how resources are allocated, and how are the soundness and performance of those decisions are monitored.
-*[[Determining Needed Systems Engineering Capabilities in Businesses and Enterprises]] describes the knowledge about how a business decides what specific SE capabilities are needed; e.g., a business that creates cutting edge products would likely require very strong architecting capabilities, including modeling tools; a business that has a global development team would likely need a very robust collaboration toolset
+*[[Determining Needed Systems Engineering Capabilities in Businesses and Enterprises]] describes how a business decides what specific SE capabilities are needed; e.g., a business that creates cutting edge products would likely require very strong architecting capabilities, including modeling tools; a business that has a global development team would likely need a very robust collaboration toolset
-*[[Organizing Business and Enterprises to Perform Systems Engineering]] describes the knowledge about various organizational models; e.g., which SE functions should be centralized,  which should be distributed,  how much SE every engineer should know
+*[[Organizing Business and Enterprises to Perform Systems Engineering]] describes various organizational models; e.g., which SE functions should be centralized,  which should be distributed,  how much SE every engineer should know
-*[[Assessing Systems Engineering Performance of Business and Enterprises]] describes the knowledge about how a business understands how well it is doing with respect to the SE actually being performed using the techniques described in [[Systems Engineering and Management]]
+*[[Assessing Systems Engineering Performance of Business and Enterprises]] describes how a business understands how well it is doing with respect to the SE actually being performed using the techniques described in [[Systems Engineering and Management]]
-*[[Developing Systems Engineering Capabilities within Businesses and Enterprises]] describes the knowledge about how the SE talent needed to provide the desired SE capabilities is grown and acquired
+*[[Developing Systems Engineering Capabilities within Businesses and Enterprises]] describes how SE talent that delivers the desired SE capabilities is grown and acquired
-*Finally, [[Culture]] describes the knowledge about how does the culture of a business affect SE;  e.g., a risk-averse business will likely use plan-driven SE processes; an entrepreneurial fast-pace business will likely use agile SE processes (See [[Life Cycle Models]]).
+*Finally, [[Culture]] describes how the culture of a business affects SE;  e.g., a risk-averse business will likely use plan-driven SE processes; an entrepreneurial fast-pace business will likely use agile SE processes (See [[Life Cycle Models]]).
 To some extent, these topics have the character of a "plan-do-check-act" cycle (Deming 1994), where the "do" part of the cycle is performing SE using the techniques described in Part 3: [[Systems Engineering and Management]]. For example, if assessing the business' SE performance shows shortfalls, then additional SE capabilities may need to be developed, the organization may need to be adjusted, processes may need to be improved, etc., all working within the existing cultural norms.  If those norms prevent the business from successfully performing SE, then transformational efforts to change the culture may be needed as well.