Editor's Corner

A very warm welcome to all SEBoK users, both old and new. The BKCASE Editor in Chief (EIC) has overall responsibility for the continuing review and update of the SEBoK. Many thanks to the BKCASE Governors and the current members of the Editorial Board for supporting me. I am delighted to be able to talk to you about SEBoK v. 1.5 which continues our commitment to regular review of the information referenced in our "Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge". Over the last 12 months the BKCASE Editorial Board has made significant efforts to become more involved in activities within our sponsoring organizations on key topics such as model based systems engineering (MBSE), agile life cycles, systems of systems, systems engineering leadership, etc. SEBoK v1.4 also included changes to respond to publication of ISO/IEC/IEEE. 15288:2015 Systems and Software Engineering - System Life Cycle Processes and the INCOSE SE Handbook v4.0, 2015, these changes continue to influence SEBoK evolution. SEBoK v.1.5 contains a small set of changes to reflect changes in referenced sources. We have also added two new case studies with particular focus on complex adaptive systems. Larger changes to Parts 3 and 4 have been delayed to March 2016 to fit into the new publishing schedule described below.

SEBoK v. 1.4

SEBoK v.1.4 feels like something of a turning point for the body of knowledge. On one hand we have “closed the loop” on the current cycle of updates to our core Systems Engineering reference sources, while on the other we have taken the first steps towards a richer relationship with other sources of knowledge and turned our focus onto some of the exciting transformations happening within Systems Engineering.

A brief summary of the changes in this version are given below, for details of content affected by these updates go to Acknowledgements and Release History.

A small but significant change has been made in SEBoK Part 2. This has been renamed from Systems to Foundations of Systems Engineering. This change reflects the focus of part 2 on the wider knowledge sources which underpin or enable good SE practice. While this has always been our aim for part 2, the old name was interpreted as an overview of all systems knowledge by some both inside and outside of BKCASE. This confusion led to a confusion in scope and purpose of some articles and miss understanding of our relationships with the systems science community. With this change we have begun to address this miss understanding and provide a firmer basis for this part of the SEBoK in future.

The most significant change to the SEBoK for v1.4 is in Part 3: SE and Management. A number of the technical and project process articles in SEBoK have been updated to reflect the revisions of ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 (ISO 2015):

• A new “Business or Mission Analysis Process” has been added to the standard. This process defines SE activities to assist business or enterprise decision makers to define the problem space, identify the stakeholders, develop preliminary operational concepts, and distinguish environmental conditions and constraints that bound the solution space. This process follows the same approach as the Business or Mission Analysis article which was already in SEBoK. This article has been updated to better align with the standard.

• The “Stakeholder Requirement Definition Process” in the standard has been renamed “Stakeholder Needs and Requirements Definition”. The revised process builds on the change above to include more description of how to translate stakeholder needs and business strategy into requirements. The SEBoK article Stakeholder Needs and Requirements has been updated to better align with the standard; a new article Life Cycle Processes and Enterprise Need has been added to discuss how requirements can be related to business strategy and needs where appropriate.

• The “Architectural Design Process” in the standard has been replaced with an “Architecture Definition Process” which focuses more on the identification of stakeholder concerns and the higher level system architecture that will address the concerns. A new “Design Definition Process” describes how system architecture translates into realisable system design. Two new SEBoK articles System Architecture and System Design reflect this revision of the standard and replace the previous article on architectural design. The Systems Requirements article has also changed to reflect these updates.

• The Logical Architecture Model Development and Physical Architecture Model Development SEBoK articles remain, describing the development of a couple commonly used architecture models in more detail as described in other standards, such as ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, Systems and Software Architecture Description (ISO 2011).

• A new “System Analysis Process” has been added to the standard. This process defines SE activities to allow developers to objectively plan and carry out quantitative assessments of a system or aspects of a system, in order to select and/or update the most efficient system architecture and to generate derived engineering data. This process follows the same approach as the System Analysis article which was already in SEBoK. This article has been updated to better align with the standard.

Some of the changes to the standard build on the descriptions of SE which were developed for the SEBoK. This is not surprising, since many of the same authors were involved in both. The alignment of these views also includes the updated INCOSE SE Handbook v4.0 (INCOSE 2015), which now fully aligns with the standard. This completes a process which has overlapped the creation of the SEBoK. Going forward we plan to expand the scope of knowledge in the SEBoK to cover broader applications of SE within this generic framework of Life Cycle Processes. It is likely that this will shift the focus of activity from SEBoK Part 3 to SEBoK Part 4: Applications of SE and in particular the tailoring of SE to a range of application types and domains.

Some other small changes have been made in Parts 4, 5 and 7 as part of the ongoing review of SEBoK material to reflect new source material. 

Future Direction for SEBoK

Once again, many thanks to the "core group of dedicated and knowledgeable contributing authors and reviewers" who make up the BKCASE community. It has been my privilege over the last 12 months to continue working with and grow this community and to expand our relationships with key organizations and groups both within systems engineering and outside of it.

The role of the Editorial Board is to work with this community of interest on an ongoing review of the current SEBoK content and structure and to develop plans for its maintenance and evolution. Our overall goals in evolving the SEBoK remain broadly the same as those outlined in the previous SEBoK updates. I have restated and slightly modified those goals below:

• Improve the ways in which Part 1 (SEBoK Introduction) provides a starting point for different SEBoK users to find and navigate knowledge relevant to them. This will include consideration of some of the SEBoK Use Cases which were not expanded in previous releases, and possible new case studies covering application domains such as Defense, Health Care or Transport.
• Review Part 2 (Foundations of Systems Engineering) with help from the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) to better understand the relationships between systems science and systems thinking as applied to engineered systems. We hope this will lead to an improved integration of systems principles, concepts, patterns and models into the other systems engineering focused knowledge areas across the SEBoK.
• Look for broader views on the key practices of Part 3 (Systems Engineering and Management) to feed back into the ongoing co evolution of key standards. In particular make more direct reference to the continuing evolution of Agile life cycle thinking and bring in more knowledge sources from the model based SE (MBSE) community.
• Expand our coverage of knowledge on systems engineering application and practices. In particular look for ways to bring in more knowledge on how systems engineering practices such as architecting, life cycle tailoring and model based systems engineering are applied in other domains.
• Identify the other groups, both within the systems engineering community and beyond, with interest in the topics of Part 5 (Enabling Systems Engineering) and Part 6 Related Disciplines and form stronger relationships with them.

We continue to work towards ensuring that our coverage of existing systems engineering knowledge is complete and to push the boundaries of that knowledge into new approaches and domains. I also want to strengthen further our links to all members of the systems engineering community through things like the SEBoK Sandbox. If you are interested in any of the activity discussed above or if you have other topics which we should be considering please contact me or the appropriate member of the Editorial Board directly or use one of the available feedback mechanisms.

We have made a good start on gathering review comments and content suggestions from as wide a variety of individuals as possible to make the SEBoK a truly community-led product. Thank you to all those who have already joined this effort and I continue to look forward to working with many of you on future SEBoK releases.

Thank you,