The
purpose of the Systems Engineering Transformation Caucus is to integrate emerging
innovations in professional practice with the existing body of Systems Engineering
practice. The consensus in the caucus is that there is no ‘one size fits all’
systems engineering. Hence, as we move
forward, a key value creation strategy for Systems Engineers is to develop
project structures that are appropriate to the circumstances for individual
projects. This need motivated the
development of an architecture for a Transformational Systems Engineering
Environment. Now that the overall
architecture has been established, we are:
- Generating mini-projects that create plug and play capabilities that can be employed to create project structures using the new environment.
- Spreading the Transformational Systems Engineering (TSE) message.
There
are a number of issues that are influencing our choice of TSE projects beginning
at this time. Highlighted issues include:
• Emergent Behavior - Exploiting innovative emergent
practices and managing negative aspects of emergence is a crucial issue as
engineered systems become more complex. Differing practices, such as TSE,
Classical SE, Agile Engineering, MBSE, Systems of Systems Engineering (SoSE),
and Design Thinking apply differing strategies for managing emergent behavior
and controlling projects. These differing practices are applicable in
differing situations. One of the objectives
of the Situation Analysis Project is to develop techniques to assess complexity
and potential emergent behavior in a project environment. Such techniques are needed to inform sound
decisions regarding project structure.
Current members of this project include Dean White, Dorothy McKinney,
Nirmal Iyengar, George Sawyer, and Lee Amon.
• Interfaces - Interfaces are crucial to
facilitating integration and agility within the TSE environment. A “plug
and play” environment requires a sound architecture and sound interfaces. George Sawyer, Carol Graham and Scott
Workinger are working on TSE interfaces.
In a very real sense, our TSE integration environment will create value
through connectivity. That means good interfaces. Quoting Eberhardt
Rechtin, "The greatest leverage in architecting is at the
interfaces."
• Collaboration - Development environments are
inherently collaborative. Also, the caucus, itself, is a collaborative
body with significant collaboration needs. We are taking action to
address these needs and we will be following up with other collaboration
support efforts. One of our challenges
in the caucus is facilitating collaboration among geographically dispersed team
members that are working hard at their ‘day jobs.’ In the caucus is that we get small slices of contributors’
time. Under these circumstances, it is difficult, if not impossible, to
regularly get everyone's time allocated, simultaneously. So, we need a
way to make our task structure visible to all of us and to coordinate
asynchronously. This is a problem that we share with many organizations. A Kanban Board is a powerful tool that that
Agile Teams use for this purpose. Amanda Foo has been leading the Kanban
Board effort. It is said, in Silicon
Valley, “Eat your own dog food.” Essentially,
if something is recommended to others, then the recommending organization
should be willing to use it. We believe
this. Such efforts are also an
opportunity to grapple with the details of useful practices and work through
potential rough spots.
• Flow and Group Flow – Individuals in flow are highly
productive and highly creative. Group Flow has been observed on Agile and
Design Thinking project teams.
Sustaining a project team in Flow is like splitting the atom. We are
happy to welcome our New Mexico colleagues Steve Kropp and Cindi Reyes to the Group
Flow Project Team. Welcome to the caucus!
We look forward to working with you.
We
have also begun to share our message with interested individuals both inside
and outside INCOSE:
- Scott Workinger presented a talk describing the issues and opportunities of Transformational Systems Engineering at the INCOSE International Workshop held in Los Angeles in January.
- Scott gave a lunchtime presentation on TSE at Lockheed Martin in March. Over 70 engineers participated.
- Scott taught an introductory course on TSE for the INCOSE Enchantment Chapter (Albuquerque, NM) in March. The course was well attended and highly rated by the students.
- Hillary Sillito, a caucus member living in Britain presented TSE opportunities as part of a presentation at a conference of The Design Society, held in Berlin, Germany in March.
- Dean White will be presenting TSE opportunities at the Naval Postgraduate School in April.
As
we move forward, we are seeing more and more ways that Transformational Systems
Engineering can contribute unique value to engineering organizations. One of our leading caucus members recently
described some of the unique value to him from his engagement in the
caucus. He explained that engaging in
the caucus caused him to rethink the method of applying requirements in certain
common project situations. To him, that
one insight provided significant benefit.
It was one insight among many.
In
a sense, we are just beginning to open the gifts. There are many opportunities. If you would like to engage with the work of
the caucus, please contact ScottWorkinger [at] gmail.com.
By
Scott
Workinger, Ph.D.
INCOSE SFBAC
Past-President
No comments:
Post a Comment