White Paper: One Model

One Model, Many Interests, Many Views

Introduction In 1995, Jim Long presented a seminal paper at the International Symposium of the International Council on Systems Engineering in which he set out the relational context for a range of behavioral views used to depict the logical architecture of systems under study or design. That document has guided our thinking and context for the ensuing years, giving us a way of thinking about the structure of our presentation of design information. Over the years, we have come to the realization that the work Long started in that paper was an invitation for us to extend its application to other views. His first steps have inspired us to continue the journey and to spread the value of his approach to an even wider audience. In that spirit we offer this paper in the hope that it brings discipline and rigor to the systems engineering conversation and proves as helpful to the reader as his paper has for audiences across the years. Communication The INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook lays out five essential benefits of model-based systems engineering: • Improved communications among the development stakeholders (e.g. the customer, program management, systems engineers, hardware and software developers, testers, and specialty engineering disciplines). • Increased ability to manage system complexity by enabling a system model to be viewed from multiple perspectives and to analyze the impact of changes. • Improved product quality by providing an unambiguous and precise model of the system that can be evaluated for correctness and completeness. • Enhanced knowledge capture and reuse of the information by capturing information in more standardized ways and leveraging built-in abstraction mechanisms inherent in model- driven approaches. This in turn can result in reduced cycle time and lower maintenance costs to modify the design. • Improved ability to teach and learn SE fundamentals by providing a clear and unambiguous representation of the concepts ( INCOSE 2015 Systems Engineering Handbook , p. 189).

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