What made me a Systems Engineer

Transcription

1 What made me a Systems Engineer Dilbert cartoons: Scott Adams Copyright 2014 Dr Kevin Howard. Published and used by the SSSE and INCOSE with permission. The author or assignee retains the copyright to the materials. Dr Kevin Howard

2 A personal perspective No excuses this is personal Its always good to learn from mistakes Particularly other peoples! It can be useful and interesting to look back at experiences I hope you find it interesting

3 The plan Quick review of background The things have contributed to my systems understanding Pick on some learning experiences Thinking failures Process failures Personal failures!

4 My Background Radars: High-power amplifiers, receivers, waveform design, imaging Antennas: Printed, conformal, arrays, large scan angle Software: Telephony, data fusion, DSP, spread-spectrum mmw Communications, passive imaging, direction finding Communications DBS, subterranean, spread spectrum, covert Vehicles Chief SE Foxhound AFV, Chief Engineer Warrior AFV... Maintaining 40+ year old cars SE Consultancy SOSA, Maritime Reference

5 A systems perspective on learning Stakeholder management Requirements management Technical development Integration Testing and evaluation Process Organisation What does it all mean to Systems Engineering

6 Stakeholder management The requirement Red Phone early 90s Customer: ITV (UK) Requirement 100 way emergency teleconference in 3 seconds In case the Queen dies! In case the advert machine breaks Solution ICT: 22x 486 PC, (up to 5 channels each site), T1 ISDN dial-up, PCI conferencing card, Customer A lose collection of franchises trying to do a single procurement Open competition But each one has their favourite

7 The Lesson The lesson Not loud enough, too loud, not intelligible, not red enough Requirements are not enough Understand and manage your customer People like to feel engaged And it all comes out at acceptance when its too late

8 Requirements capture ESM system with coverage Antenna 4 Steradian coverage 3dBi gain

9 The Lesson... To Mis-quote Scotty Ye cannae change the laws of physics Systems Engineers are people not experts They need to communicate with those that are

10 Technical Development The requirement Integrate next generation data fusion with 1970s radar 10MHz system clock 18 bit data Connecting to Pentium 300MHz clock, 66MHz FSB 32bit PCI I/O card clocking at 100MHz How hard can it be?

11 The Lesson... Never underestimate technology 20way multi-coax connection Unfamiliar so they get damaged easily Can t see the shorts went the cables get crushed! Technology turns over quickly People forget Failure to assess data throughput of wire wrap technology Slow clock... But massively parallel 17 synchronous cabinets No OS overhead PC needed data chucker management to keep up

12 Sub-system dependencies The requirement Very wide band amplitude Direction Finding (DF) Orthogonal spiral antennas 10:1 bandwidth Self similar pattern constant impedance, constant circular beam

13 The Lesson Technology is never perfect Above 3:1 Bandwidth higher order modes interfere Beam is not circular It rotates with frequency the tracking law varies with frequency Correction demands greater precision in frequency discriminator Expensive A new spiral geometry Slow the rate of rotation so that correction can be applied

14 Integration, Test and Acceptance Back to Red Phone Getting 100 people to answer the phone in 3 seconds is a challenge A quick, low cost answer Call the speaking clock

15 The Lesson 100 channels of coherent source Very loud speaking clock Can miss lead the test process Digital exchange interprets rapid dialing of the same digits as panic action And automatically calls the police Cutting corners can miss important issues

16 Process Providing service feed to a SA system: Clear spec, clear objective, clear understanding... Should be straight forward Process context Subcontractor operating at CMMI level 3 Prime at operating CMMI level 5 What could go wrong?

17 Lesson Little-Endian data feed instead of specified Big-Endian Single bit error in thousands of lines of code Discovered at integration testing Prime asks sub to change spec and code because it ll take you an afternoon. It ll take us 2 months Don t think process will fix everything there are always humans involved

18 Organisation System Engineering managed under 29(!) working groups (WG) Poor communication between them Dysfunctional engineering operations Programme threatened by lack of progress...some were just talking shops

19 The lesson Deleted and merged WGs until only 8 left Forced engineers to communicate with each other! Forced issues to be resolved Ensured clear direction and focus Talking is not communicating - Its needs direction, structure and focus

20 What about System of Systems Engineering The planned combination of assets to achieve an objective or purpose where the assets were NOT contrived for the purpose were not necessarily design to work together. Operate a capability level Its about interfaces And information But mainly about people interactions

21 What have I learned...? Some Conclusions (wash up)

22 Requirements Management Every Requirement adds cost They don t all add value Delete requirements where you can Death, Taxes and Requirements change Its the way of the world... It s not a risk Plan and budget for change Not just change management Companies make a living on it! Every change costs you money

23 OGIDTOT Oh God I Didn t Think of That However well you plan there will always be something you didn t expect Its called risk and its unavoidable... But don t put any risks in that will affect the programme...

24 What is Systems Engineering? Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, then proceeding with design synthesis and system validation while considering the complete problem The combined interaction of technologies to achieve a specific objective

25 How is Systems Engineering Achieved? Systems Engineers are there to sustain an environment of communication between disciplines and stakeholders that fosters joint working and understanding Its about people We employ them for what they know What they know affects the way they communicate

26 Its about language Whether that s written or graphical Class: Amplifier Gain: BW: Class: Circulator Class: Antenna Class: Amplifier Gain: BW: Use (learn) the language of your audience

27 Not too boring I hope