1 Project Systems Engineering 101 Available to Purchase

Systems engineering is nothing new but rather a methodical perspective to organizing sound engineering practice in an auditable manner, even when only self-audited. As shown in Figure 1.1, one can group engineering activities into five main categories: requirements, implementation, verification, validation, and record∕evolve. While reasonable professional practice in any case, members of regulated industries must document all such activities to enable external audit of their effectiveness and integrity.

This chapter presents an overarching design process perspective and terminology, particularly for those readers with minimal exposure to aerospace and defense. Interspersed throughout are pragmatic guidelines and recommended detailed practices. The design process presented is a classical “linear” or “waterfall” scheme, which admittedly has lost its cachet, particularly among academics and large-scale systems of systems practitioners. However, it still represents the foundational basics that will be central to your commercial success. One would typically formalize a procedure and associated internal forms for each box shown in Figure 1.1, e.g., as part of an ISO-9000 certification.

Administratively, the first step in the systems engineering process is the formal authorization of a project∕product. Part of that authorization is typically a project plan, which also provides a summary of resources required and schedules. A subsequent chapter discusses planning in more detail. Engineering has likely been involved with a project or product even earlier than this formal authorization event, typically spending sales and∕or marketing budget supporting their development of draft specifications, conceptual prototypes, focus group mockups, and the like. However, most companies understandably require a formal authorization event before any nontrivial sums are spent, usually whenever budgeted funds are first provided directly to engineering.