Regina Griego

Applying Object Oriented Systems Engineering to Complex Systems

Analyzing systems using functional analysis has been the mainstream for systems engineering for five decades. With the advent of object oriented software methods and the object management groups (OMG) Unified Modeling LanguageTM (UML), a number of systems engineers working on software intensive systems began to apply use cases and object oriented analysis and design (OOAD) methods to large scale, complex systems. While the use of these OO methods is still controversial within the systems engineering community, many systems engineers that apply OO methods effectively have used functional analysis and understand the strengths of both methods. FireSAT is a well known fictitious system of systems space mission to provide a space based approach to wildfire detection, monitor and control. This paper will explore the use of OOAD methods to FireSAT for problem definition, concept development, and system architecture development. Using the OMGs recently adopted System Modeling LanguageTM (SysML) and more traditional Systems engineering modeling techniques, this paper will compare and contrast some of the differences between OO and functional methods, showing diagrams from each approach.

A fresh look at Systems Engineering - what is it, how should it work?

INCOSE’s definition of SE was compared to the aspirations set out in SE Vision 2025 for SE as it ought to be to address modern challenges. Doing this led us to three fundamental realisations. First, while “20 century systems” were, for the most part, “deterministic” or nearly so, 21 century systems are on the other hand increasingly non-deterministic, adaptive or “evolutionary”. Second, while “20 Century Systems Engineering Management” was implicitly based on a “command and control” paradigm, 21 Century Systems Engineering, to be successful, will usually need to use a more collaborative leadership paradigm. And third, that while 20 Century systems were largely “single systems”, designed to “solve” specific problems, 21 Century systems are almost invariably networked, and are parts of complex extended enterprises with multiple, often conflicting, stakeholder objectives, that are intimately related to complex societal challenges. We used elements of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to understand the implication and consequences of the paradigm shift implied by these realisations. A revised strawman definition of Systems Engineering is offered for consideration by INCOSE, showing the changes that would be required to take these and related factors into account.