Guidance for General Managers

General Managers preside over system development projects, system acquisitions, product lines, systems of systems, and commercial and government organizations. For General Managers, the SEBoK serves as a primary information source and quick, comprehensive reference for systems engineering information.

In particular, the SEBoK helps the General Manager understand:

• the boundaries and synergies among systems engineering (SE), systems development, project management, and life cycle support
• how those boundaries and synergies are likely to evolve with increasing use of evolutionary development, lean and agile methods, and systems that provide purchased services as opposed to salable products
• how to best balance a mix of hardware, software, human factors, domain, and specialty-area systems engineers
• how an organization can evolve to take advantage of the trend towards cross-discipline systems engineers

Use of Topics

For General Managers, most parts of the SEBoK offer immediately relevant knowledge about systems engineering.

Part 1:

• explains the relationship between SE, system development, and project management
• summarizes overall trends in the nature of systems interdependency, complexity, assurance levels, and pace of change
• describes the evolving nature of integrated hardware-software-human systems
• provides pointers to other parts of the SEBoK of interest to General Managers

Part 3:

• explains evolving system life cycle models and their elements, indicating which elements are SE-intensive (see Life Cycle Models)
• provides overall guidance on the management of SE activity

Part 4:

• explains how the SE function varies by class of system product, service, enterprise, and systems of systems engineering)

Part 5:

• explains SE governance and competence development

Part 6:

• explains how SE relates to software engineering, project management, industrial engineering, procurement and acquisition, and specialty engineering for such specialties as safety, security, maintainability, and usability

Part 7:

• provides case studies and vignettes to illustrate how the parts have been used in similar situations in successes to emulate and failures to avoid

Vignette: Emerging Nation Satellite System

Tom Lee is General Manager for Telecommunications of a large emerging nation.

Tom has been asked to create a national satellite system for telecommunications and earth resources observation. He starts by performing cost-benefit tradeoff analyses of alternative solutions. For this SE initial activity, Tom enlists both a proven satellite SE company and some of his brightest aerospace SEs. Tom expects the SEs to learn from the SE company, and he plans to use them as the core group of the national satellite system as it ultimately develops and operates.

To acquire a solid understanding of the required SE capabilities and their application to the satellite system domain, Tom studies the SEBoK.

Tom reads:

• Part 1 for an overview and pointers to relevant sections of Parts 3 through 6
• portions of Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6 to learn about the life cycle, nature, scope, and management aspects of enterprise SE
• the successful satellite system case studies in Part 7 (Global Positioning System, Miniature Seeker Technology Integration spacecraft) for approaches to emulate
• the unsuccessful satellite system case study in Part 7 (Hubble Space Telescope) for pitfalls to avoid

Thus prepared, Tom is confident that he can formulate and execute a successful approach.

Vignette: Commercial Safety Equipment Company

Maria Moreno is General Manager at Safety First Equipment Company, specialists in hardware-intensive safety equipment. Maria’s background is in electromechanical systems. Safety First is highly successful, but beginning to lose market share to competitors who offer software-intensive capabilities and user amenities.

Maria is preparing an initiative to make Safety First into a leading software-intensive safety equipment provider. She decides to make the SEBoK her primary resource for gathering concepts and insights for the initiative. She begins by skimming through all of Parts 1 through 6, both to become familiar with the SEBoK itself and to start her thoughts about SE percolating.

Now Maria is ready to focus on subjects of prime importance to her task. Here are those subjects, listed with the places in the SEBoK where she find information about them.

In Systems Engineering and Software Engineering in Part 6:

• the nature of software
• differences between hardware and software architectures and practices
• key aspects of managing software teams

In the article Human Systems Integration in the Systems Engineering and Specialty Engineering knowledge area, also in Part 6:

• the SE of user amenities.

In the Next Generation Medical Infusion Pump Case Study in Part 7:

• the software aspects of safety practices, such as software fault tree analysis and failure modes and effects analysis,
• overall approaches for concurrent engineering of the hardware, software, and human factors aspects of safety-critical equipment

In the Medical Radiation Case Study in Part 7:

• hardware-software pitfalls to avoid in safety-critical equipment.

Maria chose the last two items from among the case studies in Part 7 because, being safety-critical, they contain lessons directly applicable to her initiative at Safety First.

With this framework of concepts and practical information in place, Maria begins assembling a core team of Safety First SEs, complemented by external experts in software and human factors engineering. Maria wants the team to begin by developing a shared vision. To that end, she asks them to read the portions of the SEBoK that she has found most valuable in assessing the challenges of transitioning Safety First into a leading software-intensive, user-friendly safety equipment provider.

Summary

The SEBoK provides insights and guidance concerning systems engineering principles and practices for General Managers in a variety of application domains and SE-related management challenge areas. These complement the general management guidance available in sources such as the PMBOK.

References

Works Cited

PMI. 2008. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). 4th ed. Newtown Square, PA, USA: Project Management Institute (PMI).

Primary References

PMI. 2008. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). 4th ed. Newtown Square, PA, USA: Project Management Institute (PMI).

Additional References

Abran, A., J. W. Moore, P. Bourque, R. Dupuis, and L. L. Tripp. 2004. SWEBOK: Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, 2004 version. Los Alamitos, CA, USA and Tokyo, Japan: IEEE Computer Society Press.

Booher, H. 2003. Handbook of Human-Systems Integration. New York, NY, USA: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Pew, R. and A. Mavor. 2007. Human-System Integration in the System Development Process. Washington, DC, USA: The National Academies Press.

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