There must be a common and standardized description of the system (baseline) that completely describes the system configuration, its components and component relationships, and supporting justification for the design as configured at a given point in time. Good up-to-date design documentation is essential for communications across the project and for tracking design changes from one baseline to the next. |
Key Points to Remember
The leadership role for systems engineering requires an understanding of the overall design process and the requirements for the participating design disciplines and their integration. It is appropriate that systems engineering assume a leadership role throughout the entire design process.
Move quality assurance to the source—everyone in the design and production process is both a customer and a supplier, and use diagnostic procedures, such as the five whys.
Compromise can only be assured by the interplay of activities, including both high-level structuring and such detailed design as is critical to overall success
The architectural approach is concerned with the feasibility as well as the desirability of the system implementation. It strives for fit, balance, and compromise between user preferences and builder capabilities (including technical disagreements between parallel tracks of the concurrent process). .
Risk management progresses in specificity and goals. Early risk management is primarily heuristic with a mix of rational methods. Early engineering estimates are replaced with data. After system construction, risk management shifts to post-incident diagnostics.
System failures must be diagnosed, a process that should end in rational analysis, but will must likely be guided by heuristic reasoning.
