Abstract

Towards Standardizing and Accelerating Systems Engineering Processes

Earnest, L. and Madni, A.M.

Abstract

Organizations engaged in the design of complex systems, are looking for ways to standardize and accelerate Systems Engineering (SE) processes and link them to project plans. Achieving the goal thus far has been more difficult than expected. To begin with capturing and making project-related process assets reusable has proven to be quite challenging. Also, reuse of process assets carries with it the risk of misapplication due to serious contextual differences in the author’s original context and the user’s current context. Beyond that, there are cultural issues that need to be dealt with. It is hard to break ingrained habits and overcome institutional resistance. Securing executive sponsorship, and making the requisite infrastructure investments pose additional challenges. This paper focuses on what it takes to capture and codify process knowledge in reusable form. It represents the key challenges in creating reusable process assets and offers recommendations for process-driven systems engineering.

From:

Earnest, L. and Madni, A.M. , Conference on System Engineering Research (CSER), 2008.