Enabling Systems Engineering

The other Parts of the SEBoK, especially Part 3 on Systems Engineering and Management are a guide to knowledge about how to perform systems engineering (SE); e.g., about how to develop requirements, select an appropriate life cycle model, and architect a System of Systems (glossary). Part 5 focuses on what an enterprise needs to do in order to be effective at performing those SE activities described elsewhere in the SEBoK; e.g., how a project manager would select the right competencies for the systems engineers he or she employs, or what the typical career path for an individual systems engineer might be.

 systems engineering   (SE) activities that support an organization's needs and deliver intended value are enabled (glossary) by many factors, such as the organization's culture, SE workforce competencies, 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, enterprises, 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.

To download a PDF of Part 5, please click here.

Knowledge Areas in Part 5

Four knowledge areas in Part 5 explore the relationships between enterprises, teams, and individuals in more depth and point the reader to important information in the literature. They are:

Key Concepts and Relationships in Part 5

Beyond individuals, there are two levels of organizational structures defined in the SEBoK: teams (which include project teams, program teams, etc.) and businesses /enterprises . 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; e.g., the healthcare system of a nation is an enterprise which does not have a centralized legal authority and has a very loose form of governance. 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. Often significant actions to enable SE are conducted by traditional businesses rather than by less well-structured enterprises. Throughout this article and related articles, 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 System (SoS) Knowledge Area also provides useful insight into the tighter control over SE that businesses usually have (the equivalent of a Directed SoS) relative to the looser control that enterprises that lack a traditional business structure usually have.

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. For example, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration formed a team in the last decade to create a new enterprise resource planning system for its operations and dispersed the team after the system was fielded. However, there are exceptions; e.g., a team of systems engineers housed in a corporate office to assist programs throughout the corporation that in trouble 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 business has context, scope, and purpose; for example, the purpose and scope of Federal Express is the delivery of letters and packages quickly and reliably. There are several other private package delivery companies with which it competes in addition to the public U.S. Postal Service. These competing companies are part of Federal Express' context.
A business creates value for its participants, shareholders, customers, society, and other stakeholders. The relevant stakeholders vary for a business; e.g., Federal Express is a publicly traded company headquartered in the U.S. Its most important stakeholders include its shareholders and the millions of customers it serves daily. The presumption, of course, is that SE activities add value to the business and that the value is greater when SE activities are well aligned to the business context, scope, and purpose, and operate consistently with the business culture.
A business assigns resources and services to teams which have context, scope, purpose, responsibilities, and accountabilities. Some of those teams may be devoted to SE activities; e.g., a team that develops system requirements or a system architecture. Other teams may have a broader role, but still include SE activities; e.g., the team that negotiates terms and conditions with a major subcontractor may be led by a specialist in contracting and negotiation, but may include systems engineers who provide technical insights into the system performance and requirements.
Teams have various roles that require specific competencies for effective execution; e.g., a SE team that develops a system architecture will require strong competencies in the most critical technologies on which the architecture is dependent and in the application domain of the system, such as finance, transportation, or communication.
Individuals who fill those roles have personal competencies; e.g., the chief systems engineer on a project typically possesses strong communication and leadership competencies.
Teams have team dynamics that are influenced by the culture of the organization and by the specific individuals on the team and their competencies.
Overall performance is driven by the team context, scope, purpose, team dynamics, and the team's composition.
A business implements governance to ensure that SE actualizes the overall strategy for the enterprise; e.g., the business may decide what authority the chief systems engineer on a project has and how decisions made by the chief systems engineer are reviewed.
The structure of the business is driven, at least in part, by the strategy.
Finally, there is an implicit recursion in the relationships between businesses, teams, and individuals; for example, a business which is a large global company may have component businesses, many of which may have further component businesses. A large program team may have component subprogram teams, many of which may have further component project teams, and so forth. Each level of the recursion is enabled and constrained to some degree by the structure, governance and context from both higher and lower levels. The specific nature of these constraints varies across organizations.

Key relationships among the main concepts in Part 5 are illustrated in Figure 1 below. Businesses, enterprises, teams, and individuals are the central concepts in the diagram.

Figure 1. Businesses, Teams, and Individuals in SE (Figure Developed for BKCASE)

References

Works Cited

None.

Primary References

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Additional References

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