The chapter's NEW LOCATION for meetings is Hacker Dojo located at 599 Fairchild Dive, Mountain View, California 94043.
More information can be found on their website: http://www.hackerdojo.com/
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Meeting Information Speaker: Phyllis R. Marbach
Date: August 11, 2014
Agenda: 5:30-6pm Networking, 6-7pm Presentation, 7:15-7:45pm Transformation Caucus Status Update (Optional)
Location: Hacker Dojo, 599 Fairchild Drive, Mountain View, CA http://www.hackerdojo.com/Summary
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary
approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems” as defined
in the INCOSE Systems Engineering handbook. When software development teams
apply agile software methodologies such as scrum, test driven development and
continuous integration (collectively referred to as “Agile software
development” hereafter); there are challenges in coordination with traditional
systems engineering efforts. This paper, developed by the INCOSE Agile Systems
Engineering Working Group, proposes methods for cross-functional teams that
include Systems and Software Engineers working on customer “pull” projects to
produce software products. This paper defines a proposed Agile SE Framework
that aligns with agile software development methodology, and describes the role
of the Systems Engineer in this context. It presents an iterative approach to
the aspects of development (requirements, design, etc.) that are relevant to
systems engineering practice. This approach delivers frequent releasable
products that result in the ability to absorb changes in mission requirements
through collaboration between systems engineers and software engineers. The
Agile SE Framework defines a way to scale agile from individual agile software
teams with a few members to large projects that require a planned architecture
and coordinated efforts.
Speaker Bio
Phyllis R. Marbach is a senior software
engineer for Boeing Defense Space and Security (BDS). Phyllis has over 30
years of experience in aerospace programs such as Satellites, chemical lasers,
the International Space Station, and various propulsion systems. Currently she
is a member of Lean-Agile Support Services (LASS), an active Agile Coach for
the Boeing Enterprise, a Certified ScrumMaster and a Certified Product
Owner. She has coached Unmanned Air Systems, Radio, avionics, and
research programs. phyllis.r.marbach@boeing.com Ms. Marbach has an
MS degree in Engineering from UCLA.
Monday, July 28, 2014
President's Message
The first half of the year has been encouraging. We continue to have good turnout at the chapter meetings, the transformation caucus is working to define processes and was well received at the International Symposium in Las Vegas, new members are joining, members are finding employment and other members are getting their certification as Systems Engineering Professionals. This past month was a bit rocky with summer vacations and the change in venue, the chapter meeting was not as smooth, but we are working up lessons learned in order to be more adaptable in the future. We are also exploring the option of having satellite locations to be more accessible to our members. If you have any suggestions on what we can do to encourage more of our members attending, please submit them.
It was my
honor to accept the Silver Circle award at the International Symposium. The award
recognizes the chapter’s efforts to bring value and provide services to
our members. There were several members
of the chapter who I would like to thank for their contributions. First, I want to acknowledge David Mason who
did much of the leg work to submit the evidence of the activities that our chapter
engaged in and who also has been the Student Division Coordinator. Gulnara Ghorbanian was our newsletter
editor. Scott Workinger is the organizer
of the Transformation Caucus. Andrew
Tisdale was the program coordinator.
When you have the opportunity, please thank them for their volunteer
effort.
At the
International Symposium, I gave a presentation that was coordinated with George
Sawyer on Interfaces for Transformational System Engineering. A point that was made in the presentation is
the need to take a broader view of interfaces.
It should not be limited to the physical, electrical, and functional
flow of information between elements in a system but should also address the
organizations and people (developers, users, maintainers, etc) involved in the
life cycle of the system. I have been
working on conducting a system failure mode and effects analysis of the
interfaces between subsystems in the system.
One element that I'm finding troublesome is the use of software of
unknown provenance (SOUP). The system is
safety critical and it is imperative that any failure which could result in
hazardous situation be identified and mitigated. Identifying SOUP and understanding its
interface/interaction on the system is the first step. Identifying the organization that developed
the software can reduce the unknown risk.
The level of integration of SOUP in the system is quite complex; from
development tools to device drivers.
Working through the organization to identify what SOUP is being employed
is also challenging. Some of the
software is so familiar to the developers that it is not recognized as SOUP and
the interfaces with some software is subtle and can be overlooked. Fortunately, the organization and all of the
engineers are committed to ensuring that our product is safe and effective; so,
there is an open exchange of information and full disclosure. It is an investigation to uncover the
software through the design and development documentation, software reviews and
interviews with the developers. These
are the interpersonal skills that systems engineers need to develop.
If you have
any experience with systems failure modes and effects analysis
(FMEA), particularly with regards to SOUP, I welcome your response to this
article.
By Rollie
Olson
INCOSE SFBAC President
Rollie Olson's Bio
Rollie Olson's Bio
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Highlights of INCOSE’s 2014 Symposium
The heat wave in Las Vegas in late June and early July of 2014 made it very easy for INCOSE members and others interested in systems engineering to choose to spend their time at the Symposium rather than outside in the sun. This year’s Symposium featured a rich mix of tutorials, papers, panel discussions, working group, and committee meetings. Several of the meetings and tutorials took place on the weekend before the Symposium formally opened, including an all-day meeting on Sunday for the Transformational Caucus which is led by our San Francisco Bay Area Chapter.
Plenary
speakers shared their experiences in applying systems engineering in diverse
fields. If you missed them, you can
watch videos of the first two keynote addresses at http://www.incose.org/symp2014/?page=video .
The talk on “Thinking differently about systems
engineering problems – dogs, bears and magic numbers” by Scott McArthur was especially engaging (although you have to practice
your Scottish listening to get the full value from this talk). The third keynote was given by Chuck
Severance, a professor at the University of Michigan who was one of the first
to start teaching a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC). His talk is not available on the website (at
least as of this writing), but he painted a very evocative picture of the
changing future of higher education, in which MOOCs will likely be used by
students to help them prepare for admission to the best colleges, and be used
by colleges to allow them to teach only subjects in which they can add real
value. He envisions a future in which
the lower-quality colleges will probably go out of business (because they are
too expensive for the value they offer students), and in which students who are
more able to learn on their own will have a huge advantage because they can
benefit from all of the different forms in which knowledge will be conveyed.
The 2014 winner of INCOSE’s Special Award at the International Science
and Engineering Fair, Matthew
Hileman, was recognized during the plenary session on the second day of the
Symposium. This picture shows Matthew
(right) with the President of INCOSE, David Long (center), and Bill Mackey
(left), who led the team of INCOSE judges for ISEF.
Start
planning now to attend next year’s INCOSE Symposium, July 13 – 16, 2015 in
Seattle, Washington, and plan to participate in a Transformational Caucus
meeting tentatively scheduled on the weekend before (July 11 or 12). This will be the 25th annual
INCOSE Symposium, and it should be a great one!
By Dorothy McKinney
INCOSE SFBAC
Board Member
INCOSE Fellow
INCOSE Sponsorship at FIRST Robotics
INCOSE sponsored the ‘Judges’ Dinner’ at the ‘For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)’ final completion for 2014. The dinner was held on
April 24 for 105 judges and 13 special guests. Dinner
included recognition and presentations by the founder, Mr. Dean Kamen, and Dr.
Woodie Flowers: the National Advisor and Pappalardo Professor Emeritus of
Mechanical Engineering at MIT (pictured with Mr. Greg Gorman and Mr. David
Mason) the day before the finals were completed. Dinner also included warming and emotional
presentations by several FIRST team members whose lives were significantly
changed due to their involvement in FIRST.
INCOSE
also presented certifications and a flash memory stick with INCOSE materials to
the 149 Deans List awardees.
This year’s winning FIRST Robotics Competition alliance included
Team 254; The Cheesy Poofs from San Jose, California, Team 469; Las Guerillas
from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Team 2848; the Sparks from Dallas, Texas, and
Team 74; Team C.H.A.O.S. ,from Holland, Michigan.
This
year there were 68,175 students on 2,727 FRC teams, across 17 countries
participating in 98 Regional and District competitions before reaching the finals
in St. Louis. Over 8,000,000 volunteer hours were recorded amongst the teams
mentors, coaches, judges, and parents to reach the finals.
Each Year these team are provided the ‘challenge’, this
year in the form of a video, in the January time frame and enter competitions
in just six weeks. Below are just a few examples of the variety of solutions
these high school students generated during this short period.
INCOSE
SFBAC hopes to sponsor a team within our area. Please contact your Chapter
President Rollie Olson or David Mason, Assistant Director for Student Division,
INCOSE for more information.
By
David Mason, CSEP
INCOSE SFBAC Board Member
INCOSE Assistant Student Division
David Mason's
Bio
INCOSE SFBAC Board Member
INCOSE Assistant Student Division
New Member Spotlight: Mirna Johnson
The International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2014 Summary
The International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) is an annual event sponsored by the Society for Science & the Public, in partnership with the Intel Foundation. For the last several years, INCOSE has given one of the Special Awards at ISEF to the student project which best reflects the application of systems engineering. Student winners are ninth through twelfth graders who earned the right to compete at the Intel ISEF 2014 by winning a top prize at a local, regional, state or national science fair.
In 2014, ISEF was held in Los Angeles, and the INCOSE team
of judges included four INCOSE Fellows (Dorothy McKinney from our SFBAChapter,
plus three INCOSE Fellows from the East Coast: Bill Mackey, Chandru Mirchandani,
and Jerry Fisher) and five members of the INCOSE Los Angeles Chapter (Dr. Gelys Trancho, David Imbodien,
Cate Heneghan, Gina Parodi De Reid, and Michael Dickerson). The team of judges reviewed the abstracts for
several hundred of the over 1600 total projects at the ISEF. John Walker was kind enough to review the
abstracts in advance, and identify the subset for our team of judges to
consider, thus making the job of the judges much more manageable. As they reviewed the projects, our team of
judges looked for the following:
- The project involves characterizing, designing, building, modifying and/or testing a clearly identifiable complex system.
- The system’s utility to society should also be clearly apparent. We are looking for something that can be built; modified, or redesigned to provide an appropriate solution to a societal (stakeholder) need.
- Systems engineering practices should be clearly applied (even if the student does not use systems engineering terminology to describe what they have done).
The winner of
the INCOSE award receives $1500, and is invited to the next INCOSE
Symposium. At the Symposium, the winner
is given a booth in the exhibitor area, and asked to present his/her project to
the Symposium attendees. Matthew
Hileman, the 2014 winner, attended the 2014 INCOSE Symposium together with his
mother, and he was recognized in one of the Symposium plenary sessions.
In addition
to selecting the winner of the INCOSE award, the team selects up to 10
honorable mentions. The INCOSE team of
judges also talks to each of the students responsible for the most promising 40
or 50 projects to discuss the goals and value of systems engineering. Our hope is to inspire these promising
students to take an interest in systems engineering as they move forward in
their education and their careers.
The winner
and honorable mention awardees for 2014 were:
First Award of $1,500
|
|
EE093
|
Cube Satellites: Miniature
Satellite Design and Operations for Pulsed Plasma System Applications
|
Matthew Hileman, 16, The Classical Academy, College Pathways,
Colorado Springs, Colorado
|
|
Certificate
of Honorable Mention
|
|
CS031
|
Train the
Artificial Brain II: Computer-Aided Diagnosis and Treatment Plan of
Alzheimer's Disease using Neural Networks
|
Roma Vivek Pradhan, 17, Friendswood High School,
Friendswood, Texas
|
|
CS084
|
Voice Integrated Development
Environment for People Who Are Blind, Myopia Affected or Have RSI
|
Diana Marusic, 16, Theoretical Lyceum "Ion
Creanga," Chisinau, Republic of Moldova
|
|
EE061
|
Electromagnetic Tire Propulsion
System
|
Alexander William Beall, 17, Brunswick High School,
Brunswick, Maryland
|
|
EE082
|
Development of a Teleoperation
Robot
|
Mina Fahmi Fahmi, 17, Great Mills High School, Great
Mills, Maryland
|
|
EN012
|
The VP (Ventriculoperitoneal)
Shunt Circuit
|
Jennifer Lauren Cramer, 18, West Linn High School, West
Linn, Oregon
|
|
ET044
|
The Cooling of Solar Panels to
Increase Power Output
|
Christopher Rafael Botello, 15, John Jay High School, San
Antonio, Texas
|
|
ET045
|
Optimizing the Utilization of Wind
Energy with an Alternative Engineering Design: A Horizontal Dual Motor
Turbine, Phase II
|
Caid Lunt, 17, Weber High School, Pleasant View, Utah
|
|
ET062
|
Cones, Chutes, and Coils: Novel
Proposals to Ebb Wingtip Vortices
|
Loren J. Newton, 16, La Sierra High School, Riverside,
California
|
|
ET065
|
Rain Power
|
Michael Jose Lopez Chiesa, 18, Saint Mary's Ryken High
School, Leonardtown, Maryland
|
|
By Dorothy McKinney
INCOSE SFBAC Board Member
INCOSE Fellow
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