INCOSE Vision 2025 “A World in Motion” identifies classic challenges that organizations face as they seek to deliver capabilities and systems in today’s world. We see accelerating growth in the complexity of the problems we address as well as the implementation technologies upon which we rely. As information transitions from team to team throughout the systems lifecycle, knowledge and investment are lost at lifecycle phase boundaries introducing inefficiencies and errors. Looking across projects, knowledge and investment are lost across the greater engineering portfolio. Put simply, what got us here won’t get us there as we deliver the vision of Industry 4.0, Society 5.0, and the next-generation systems our customers demand.
To successfully address these challenges, we must address both the part and the whole. We must address both the part complexity as the number of parts increases and the interaction complexity as the number and nature of the connections between those pieces explodes. Fortunately, the tool to manage interactions and complexity is well known to us. Architecture enables us to define the fundamental organization of a system as embodied in its components as well as their relationships to each other and the environment. Refocusing the systems lifecycle around architecture honors that interactions within the system (and within the organizations developing the system) that drive emergence enabling organizations to manage both part and interaction complexity through life.
Architecture-Driven Engineering recognizes the critical role architecture plays in managing system complexity, enabling knowledge retention, and establishing the design envelope. It is a pragmatic approach to effectively defining and capturing architectures which can easily transition to detailed design, implementation, and verification. It enables us to embed health, resilience, and security in the systems we develop and to maintain continuity from first concept through implementation, operations, and retirement.
Architecture-Driven Engineering is complementary to agile development, providing a framework for continuous expansion and improvement as our capability evolves. It establishes a foundation for model-based systems engineering, aligning and retaining information across the enterprise delivering the right data, right place, right time, right presentation to unlock the collective intelligence of the transdisciplinary team. It is scalable and tailorable to the specific problem and context enabling fit-for-purpose implementation. Architecture-Driven Engineering moves us from a manufacturing-centric view of the lifecycle to a systems-centric view necessary to define and manage the interactions, delivering the characteristics we want while avoiding the unintended consequences we cannot afford.
This presentation will address:
- The critical role of architecture in addressing complexity
- Developing better architectures through MBSE
- Connecting the engineering lifecycle and greater enterprise through architecture
- The benefits of Architecture-Driven Engineering.
As products become more complex and our environment becomes more dynamic, successfully delivering the right product is more challenging than ever. As we unleash the power of architecture, we better translate customer needs into product success.