Enabling Systems Engineering

This is Part 5 of the SEBoK, Enabling Systems Engineering. Part 5 is a guide to knowledge about how an enterprise prepares and positions itself to effectively perform the systems engineering (SE) activities described elsewhere in the SEBoK.

For example, how to develop requirements, select an appropriate life cycle model, and architect a system of systems, are covered elsewhere, especially in Part 3, Systems Engineering and Management.

To do those things effectively, an organization must work through questions like whether to allow a project manager to select the systems engineers he or she employs, and, if so, what competencies the project manager might seek in those systems engineers. Those are the kinds of questions explored in this Part.

The discussion defines three levels of organization: enterprise, team, and individual. To extrapolate an example to suit a more complex organizational structure, simply decompose enterprises into sub-enterprises and teams into sub-teams, as needed. For more about the different types of enterprises, see Types of Systems in Part 2.

You can download all of Part 5 as a PDF.

Knowledge Areas in Part 5

Each part of the SEBoK is divided into knowledge areas (KAs), which are groupings of information with a related theme. The KAs in Part 5 explore how the three levels of an organization enable SE:

• Enabling Businesses and Enterprises
• Enabling Teams
• Enabling Individuals

Enterprises and Businesses

The introductory paragraphs above noted that Part 5 divides organizations into three levels: enterprise, team, and individual. A business is a special type of enterprise which usually has a legal structure and a relatively centralized control structure; e.g., as a corporation or a unit of a company or government agency that creates a specific product line or offers specific services. An enterprise may be a traditional business, but can also cross traditional business boundaries. The healthcare system in the US for example, is an enterprise which does not have a centralized legal authority and has a very loose form of governance involving hospitals, insurance companies, medical equipment manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, government regulators, etc. Another example of an enterprise which is not a traditional business is the set of companies that form the supply chain for a manufacturer, such as the thousands of companies that contribute parts and services enabling Apple to create, distribute, and support the iPhone. Significant actions that enable SE are often conducted by traditional businesses rather than by less well-structured enterprises. Throughout this article and others in Part 5, the term "business or enterprise" may be shortened to just "business" or "enterprise" depending on the point being made. The reader should look at Enterprise Systems Engineering in Part 4 of the SEBoK for further elaboration on the distinction between businesses and enterprises and the value of systems engineering of enterprises to them. The Part 4 Systems of Systems (SoS) KA also provides useful insight into the tighter control over SE that businesses usually have (the equivalent of a Directed SoS, discussed in the Groupings of Systems article) relative to the looser control that enterprises that lack a traditional business structure usually have.

An enterprise operates in an organizational context that affects how it approaches SE and therefore how it enables SE performance; e.g., a business that sells to the general commercial marketplace will typically have many fewer constraints on how it practices SE than one which performs contract work for a government agency. A business that creates systems with very demanding characteristics, such as aircraft, typically has a much more rigorous and planned approach to SE than one which is creating less demanding systems, such as an app for a smartphone.

Teams

Teams are usually formed for a specific purpose of limited duration, such as creating a new system or upgrading an existing service or product. Once the new system has been created and delivered or the existing service or product has been upgraded and fielded, the team responsible for that effort is usually disbanded and the individuals associated with the effort are assigned to new tasks. However, there are exceptions; e.g., a team of systems engineers housed in a corporate office to assist troubled programs throughout the corporation could persist indefinitely. On the other hand, businesses typically have permanence. They usually offer a portfolio of products and services, introduce new ones, retire old ones, and otherwise seek to grow the value of the business. In a corporation, management of that portfolio might be centralized under the direction of the corporate executives. In a non-business enterprise, such as a national healthcare system, there may be only loose coordination of execution among many businesses; e.g., a national healthcare system includes physicians, drug companies, hospitals, government regulatory agencies, etc. A business may offer its products and services to a single customer; e.g., a small supplier that makes a single product solely for a large manufacturer. Sometimes, a single product or service has such value and longevity that it spawns a business or enterprise just for its creation, maintenance, and support; for example, the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft was developed by a consortium of three companies that formed a holding company specifically for the purpose of providing support and upgrade services throughout the in-service life of the aircraft.

A team operates within the context of the business in which it resides; e.g., a business may choose to give a team a lot of autonomy on key technical decisions, most of which are either made by systems engineers on the team or in consultation with team systems engineers. On the other hand, a team could be constrained by business policies, practices, and culture; e.g., a business could create a generic set of SE processes that all teams are to tailor and use. The business could even require that the team gain approval for its tailored SE process from a higher level technical authority.

Common Practices

SE activities that support a business' needs and deliver intended value are enabled by many factors, such as the organization's culture (See Culture), SE competencies (See Determining Needed Systems Engineering Capabilities in Businesses and Enterprises), SE tooling and infrastructure, and how the organization grows and deploys its workforce in order to arm it with those competencies. There are as many different ways to enable SE performance as there are organizations, and every organization's approach is highly detailed and unique. Nevertheless, the many common practices, methods, and considerations that organizations use can provide a framework to structure the relevant knowledge. Part 5 discusses those enabling common practices and methods of businesses, teams, and individuals, and begins with an articulation of strategies that enable SE to be performed well by a business. Specific tools and information technology infrastructure to perform SE are not discussed here, but are addressed in Part 3, Systems Engineering and Management.

References

None.

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