Question

 

Systems engineering organizations are often created for just one project.

What do you think are the key items and issues that need to be implemented to manage a system engineering organization created for a project implementation?

Consider the following in your response:

1.The major aspects of organizing and staffing a team.
2.Processes that are needed

3.How the project is staffed

4.Where personnel will be located

5.How personnel will be trained

6.Tools that will be needed

Answer 1

What do you think are the key items and issues that need to be implemented to manage a system engineering organization created for a project implementation?

A systems engineering organisation is created for a specific business reason (the project that is being implemented) and the structure is designed to align with what value/products/services are being created. A Systems engineering team is usually focused more on ensuring that requirements are gathered and documented accurately so that they can be used to check that the product is being 'built right' and that the 'right product' is being built (Van Gemert, 2013).

The team should therefore include experts in all the relevant areas, such as design and integration, requirements gathering, operations, verification and validation, risk (Jolly, 2011). Some common processes that are included are :

- The requirements gathering expert can ensure that any requirements from clients/users/prior feedback are incorporated to get a more complete picture of the product or service that being developed.

- The design and integration experts will then provide inputs in the creation of a design architecture from that set of requirements to create a blueprint of the desired outcome. The integration expert will ensure that any overlaps or junctures are taken into account and compensated for.

- The operations expert will monitor the day to day activities and ensure that operations run smoothly, working to resolve any impediments to success that might crop up.

- The risk and quality expert will work with the project manager to identify and resolve/mitigate any known risks or quality issues, while also making provision for any unknown ones e.g. contingency buffer for additional time/cost to be utilised in case of an unplanned disaster.

- The verification and validation experts will check that all valid tests are designed and ready to be applied to the outcome once it passes the development stage. It is always advisable to define tests earlier so that their compliance can be coded into the outcomes.

- User training and support experts will ensure all relevant documentation is maintained in all forms and for pre and post usage support e.g. in-code for software products, user manuals and operating instructions for devices, videos/FAQs for customers and ongoing support.

It is always best to have the systems engineering team located with the project development team, however in these days of global workforces that is not always possible. In that case, it would help to have the parts of the team that work together in each group be co-located. e.g. validation and verification team with the quality and testing team. The experts in the systems engineering can also serve dual roles and be a part of the project team but it is advisable to have the roles divided to ensure there is no conflict in conducting the duties. Similarly the same expert can handle the management of more than one process area - this can work well if the expert has sufficient prior experience in a similar role. These experts should be trained to perform their roles, which is to govern all the effort needed to create and maintain a product/solution/service (IEEE, 2016), and organisations will usually conduct classroom trainings for the same to ensure the systems engineering mindset is inculcated in the proposed team.

There are a lot of SE tools available in the market such as Teamcenter, IBM's Rational tools, Innoslate, which can be bought and applied as-is (plug and play mode) by organisations looking to do systems engineering. These tools all have some variation/combination of collaboration tools, software for requirements analysis and management, business process/architecture/software modelling (System engineering tool, 2020)

References :

IEEE. (2016). ISO/IEC/IEEE International Standard for Systems and Software Engineering -- Life Cycle Management -- Part 4: Systems Engineering Planning. ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-4 First edition 2016-05-15. 1-73

Jolly, Steve. (2011) Systems Engineering: Roles and Responsibilities. Lockheed-Martin Space Systems Company. 9

System engineering tool (2020) List of Systems Engineering Tools.

Van Gemert, D. (2013). Systems engineering the project. Project Management Institute.