Mr. David Mason Receives INCOSE's Outstanding Service Award

Mr. David Mason received an ‘Outstanding Service Award’ at the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) 2015 International Symposium for establishing the concept of INCOSE Student Divisions.

Dr. David Long, President of INCOSE, is pictured presenting the award to Mr. Mason, the INCOSE Assistant Director of Student Divisions.

The citation reads: ‘For his outstanding service in establishing the concept of INCOSE Student Divisions, and his years of dedicated service to the Member Board, the Americas Sector, and the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of INCOSE.'

Mr. Mason began his INCOSE staff position in 2008 with 10 registered students. A presentation at the 2015 INCOSE IW reported to the Academic Matters the number of registered students is over 700 members with 13 university student divisions sponsored by local by INCOSE Chapters.

Mr. Mason has supported the creation of student divisions, University engineering clubs, sponsored by the LA Chapter, Southern Arizona, Central Arizona, New Mexico, and Washington Metro. Presentations of the ‘value propositions’ for all stakeholders has been presented at assorted INCOSE events, internationally in Pretoria and Cape Town South Africa, China, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Development of a student division is a challenging endeavor at each unique University where the university focus, established curriculum, student population, INCOSE Chapter participation, and the associated international culture are weaved together like a fine woven blanket. The greatest challenge at each student division is sustainability by maintaining the value proposition for all of the 4-Way Benefit Model stakeholders.  These challenges can only be met with the support from local INCOSE members who represent practicing professional systems engineers. 

President's Message

This is the time of year where INCOSE recognizes its members.  As you recall in the last newsletter, our chapter earned the Silver Circle Award for 2015 for the seventh year in a row.  This award recognizes the chapter’s performance in areas which promote systems engineering and the value to members for being a part of the INCOSE organization.

It was my honor to accept the award on behalf of the chapter at the International Symposium which was a recognition of leadership and member contributions to the technical and social programs afforded to members.

Congratulations to Dave Mason upon receiving the INCOSE 2015 Outstanding Service Award.  He and other distinguished INCOSE members were recognized for their volunteer effort to the organization at the International Symposium celebrating INCOSE’s 25th anniversary.

This award recognized Dave’s contributions to the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter and the INCOSE Student Division, as well as his contributions to the discipline of systems engineering.

The June meeting featured a presentation by Laurie Buss on Group Flow: The Genesis of Innovation.  This is an element of the Transformation Caucus.  Ms. Buss presented how a variety of critical thinking skills are needed in a group environment to promote program success.  It was an interactive presentation to provide opportunity to practice some of the skills.  It stimulated some follow-up by one of our members on the impact of deadlines on flow and creativity.  Stay tuned for the paper to be submitted with several others for this fall’s Insight publication.

We are continuing to investigate the potential of offering a workshop on Mastering Agile Requirements, by Agile Learning Labs.  The timeframe had to be moved to this fall as they filled up on requests.  In order to put this on, we do need to have a minimum of 15 participants.  The tentative cost will be $400 to $500 for a one day workshop.  If you are interested, please respond to rollie.olson@incose.org in order for us to proceed with planning.

We are also discussing a workshop on Transformational Systems Engineering by Dr. Scott Workinger. If there are any other topics of interest, please let us know.

In cooperation with the Los Angeles, San Diego, Central and Southern Arizona Chapters, we are working on a mini regional conference to be held 8-9 April 2016 at Loyola Marymount University.  This will provide INCOSE members with low cost learning and networking opportunity who might not be able to attend International Symposium.

The theme planned for the conference is Systems Engineering – One Discipline Providing Global Value:  Fundamentals, Applications, and Innovation.  This conference will consider that systems engineering is a global discipline, and that its concepts and fundamentals can be adapted for many different applications to solve worldwide concerns and create value.

We are looking for volunteers to support the planning and organizing for the conference and the call for papers will be going out shortly.  This is an excellent opportunity for members to get published, share their knowledge with systems engineers, and be recognized.  Please contact rollie.olson@incose.org if you are interested in volunteering for any role.

By Rollie Olson 
INCOSE SFBAC President

Invitation to Participate in a MIT Survey

Katharina Tomaschek write to invite chapter members to participate in a study on the state-of-the-art practice of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) and challenges using this method. This study is conducted by a research team at MIT Sloan School of Management under the supervision of Professor Steven Eppinger and Professor Nitin Joglekar. They believe that a better understanding of the TRL practice will benefit not only future academic work but also the daily practice in industry applications. Your opinion on TRLs is very valuable to MIT and they would appreciate if you take time to complete this 20-minute online survey on Technology Readiness Level Challenges.  All data you provide will be kept completely confidential as specified by MIT rules. Only aggregated data analyses will be disseminated. 

This link takes you directly to the survey:
http://web.mit.edu/trlsurvey

Katharina would be delighted if you would also forward this link to your colleagues working with TRLs. To thank you for your participation, Katharina would be happy to send you a briefing on the analysis. Contact Katharina Tomaschek regarding this or other questions at TRLsurvey@mit.edu.

Save the Date: International Workshop 2016

The International Workshop (IW) 2016 will be held in Torrance, California on January 30 to February 2, 2016 at the Marriott Torrance Hotel (Same location as 2015).

 http://www.incose.org/newsevents/currentevents/2015/01/13/incose-iw-2016---torrance-ca-usa

Membership Meeting: August 10

Title: Agile Systems Engineering Process Fundamentals, Life Cycle Models, and Projects

Abstract: This talk will brief fundamental architecture and design principles underlying any system or process that would be agile – able to deal effectively with operational environments that are unpredictable, uncertain, risky, variable, and evolving. He will brief the INCOSE project that is discovering Agile System Engineering Life Cycle Model fundamentals in fifteen 3-day workshops in the US and Europe, which is analyzing agile SE processes of many kinds for underlying agile-enabling principles across twenty 15288 processes. Preliminary findings from the early August 2015 workshop that analyzed the Wave-model process employed by Navy SpaWar for unmanned systems development will be discussed. A brief outline of the Agile Systems & Systems Engineering working group projects and knowledge development process will also be provided.

Bio: Rick has an entrepreneurial background with founder and management experience in all C-level positions, and has dispatched a variety of interim executive problem-solving and program-management assignments in established organizations. He was Co-Principal Investigator on the 1991 Lehigh study funded by the US Department of Defense that introduced the concepts of agile systems and enterprises, and led the subsequent DARPA-funded collaborative research during the nineties that established basic system fundamentals for agile systems of all kinds. In the late nineties he led industry collaborative workshops introducing agile concepts across a variety of industries through a process called Realsearch, a form of collaborative action learning. In the late eighties he led the development of the first research agenda for the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, and organized its collaborative-consortia research mechanisms. He is an INCOSE Fellow, president of the INCOSE Enchantment Chapter (New Mexico), and chairs the INCOSE working groups for Agile Systems and Systems Engineering, and for System Security Engineering. He is CEO/CTO of Paradigm Shift International, an applied research firm specializing in agile systems concepts and education, and leads agile self-organizing system security research and development on US DHS and OSD funded projects. Rick is an adjunct professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, where he develops and teaches basic and advanced graduate courses in agile systems and systems engineering. He holds a BSEE from Carnegie Mellon University.