This Spring edition of the Newsletter follows the Winteredition in fairly short order. For a somewhat rushed job (I willbe slaving over a hot photocopier as soon as I have finished thisleader) there is a lot of material in it.
The original reason for publishing now was to remind you allof the UK Conference in June. It has always been well attendedand past attendees agree that it has been a highlight of theINCOSE year.
And theres more to come with the European Conference inNovember. It should be an interesting event and a goodopportunity to see what other European countries are doing withSystems Engineering. On a more local scale the first localmeeting has been scheduled.
Things are afoot with the INCOSE UK web site. I have yet tosample the new sire myself, but it sounds very exciting. Weshould all be grateful to Jonathan Moffett and David Hull forsupporting the old web site for the last 2½ years. Hopefully thenew site will help to draw in new members and provide a betterservice.
There is a piece on the Systems Engineering PrinciplesDevelopment Committee. This has got under way again with meetingdates set through till December. Sadly I have failed to attend sofar, despite my best intentions, due to pressure of work. If youfeel that you have something to contribute please contact MikePrince.
Mike Prince is also keen to recruit volunteers to discuss SEcourses. This is an area which we should all be interested in ifwe believe in Systems Engineering as a discipline. Anotherdiscipline that we should be interested in closer ties with isProject Management. Allen Fairbairn reports on some moves todiscuss the meaning of life with the Association of ProjectManagers.
Last, but by no means least, a we have a piece on SystemsEngineering as it is propounded by the (US) INCOSE Web page. I amnot sure to what extent the author had his tongue firmly in hischeek, but there are issues raised which we should beconsidering. As always the Newsletter will be keen to publish allthe views which are fit to print (with or without attribution).
So that about wraps it up for this bumper bundle. See you atLuton!
If you havent booked your place at the UK Symposium onthe 2nd and 3rd of June there is still time. So get on and do itNOW! If you have lost your form John Mead will gladly supply youwith another.
The event, to be held at the Chiltern Hotel Luton, promises tobe better than ever. There is a full and varied programme ofspeakers and plenty of opportunity to discuss life, the Universeand Systems Engineering with your INCOSE colleagues.
We have booked a professional speaker, Barry Roberts, for theafter dinner spot. Barry is a cartoonist, scriptwriter, and afterdinner speaker. He has provided material for many celebratedspeakers.
He has also worked as a comedy Scriptwriter for shows such asNews Huddlines, Dave Allen At Large, The Two Ronnies, SpittingImage. As a playwright he has won the BBC Radio Drama Award. As acartoonist he has contributed to most of the major periodicals aswell as book illustrations.
His speaking engagements have varied from BusinessConferences, Ladies Lunches, Sportsmans Dinners, RoundTable and Golf Days. He also delivered a speech to the OxfordUniversity Union Debating Society where he was pitted against IanHislop and Stephen Fry.
Much has been said about holding regional INCOSE meetings butwe have yet to have one!
The first one to be organised will be held in Kent, at GECMarconi Avionics Offices in Rochester on 2nd February 1998, andwill be held jointly with the Kent Branch of the IEE. The mainspeaker will be Peter Brook, INCOSE Regional Director for Europe.
This meeting neatly shows the simple ingredients needed tohost one of these meetings:
A venue (eg an INCOSE member's worksite) where there would bea reasonable;
However, the main ingredient is a member willing to bringthese elements together and our thanks must go to Richard Smithfor taking the initiative to organise this first one.
Any member prepared to follow suit should contact Mike Prince,Allen Fairbairn or John Mead to chew the idea over and we will doall we can to help you make the event happen.
For over a year now the chapter has camped out on the web,relying on the services of Jonathan Moffett and David Hull at theUniversity of York. As we move forward through UK and Europeansymposia this year and towards the International Symposium inBrighton in 1999, it is clear that there will be an increasingvolume of material needing to be made available via the Internet.
It also seems that the web, together with e-mail may offer away of supporting the other activities of the chapter where wehave suffered from the wide geographical distribution of ourmembers. So, we have finally decided to spend real money andacquire our own domain name, which is hosted by a commercialprovider.
To explore the new site, turn your browser tohttp://www.incose.org.uk. Everything from the old site is there,although displayed in a new style. New information on symposiaand new links to other interesting Systems Engineering sites onthe net have been added, as has a facility to search the site.
Over the next few months we intend to add both new informationand new features. Look out for a discussion area in the nearfuture. As we move towards our symposium in June, the latestinformation will be posted.
These are some of our ideas, but you may have others. What doyou want? What do you think of what's there? Do you know of someother good sites we should link to? Please let me know at
Finally, whilst we have an e-mailing list, quite a number ofyour addresses bounce, and quite a few seem to be missing, sowould all of you with e-mail access please send a message to , withthe title INCOSE e-mail address, and containing your preferrede-mail address in the body of the message (for the techies amongyou, you can't always rely on extracting the right answer fromthe headers).
Steve Mallon
INCOSE UK Chapter Webmaster
The Systems Engineering Principles and Development Committee(SEPDC) is one of two committees within the structure of the UKChapter of INCOSE, the other being the Communications andMembership Committee (CMC). Membership and attendance iscurrently derived from a small number of active INCOSE members.
The SEPDC provides the following functions:
Noting the US organisation the SEPDC has proposed that in thefuture IGs should be linked to regional meetings, the IGsthemselves being sub-committees of SEPDC. IGs would be set up fora limited period tasked to investigate specific issues, possiblyleading to a focused INCOSE meeting to report back with findings.
A programme of SEPDC meetings has been established for 1997 toaddress the following time dependent topics as well as otherbusiness:
| Tuesday 10th June | UK symposium wash-up, US symposium organization |
| Thursday 24th July | Final preparation for US symposium |
| Tuesday 16th September | AGM seminar planning |
| Tuesday 28th October | AGM |
| Tuesday 9th December | European symposium wash up |
Paul Newman
At its last meeting the UK Main Board considered a proposalthat INCOSE UK should develop and deliver SE training courses forits members. This seems to be a natural progression in theprovision of member services from the symposia and seminars nowrun annually. It is felt that this service could particularlybenefit members in smaller companies or in companies wheresystems engineering is a peripheral or newly-emerging activity.
The idea is to develop a portfolio of courses with properlyprepared lecturer notes and presentation material together withhigh quality student hand-outs. Trainers would be drawn from theexisting and prospective membership, but would be paid reasonablecommercial rates for their work.
In order to turn this idea into reality we need to establish avolunteer working group to work-up the details of a practicableand sustainable way of implementing it. If there is no enthusiasmfor the idea and volunteers to make it happen dont comeforward then it will wither and die.
I think it is a practical way in which INCOSE UK can make aworthwhile contribution to improving and extending the practiceof systems engineering and therefore worth supporting.Accordingly I would like to use the forthcoming symposium as anopportunity to bring together a group of people with an interestin making this happen with a view to forming the working group todevelop the idea.
If you are interested please button-hole me at Luton or,especially if you are not planning to be there, fax or mail me.
Fax: 01202 404972 email:A Report by Allen Fairbairn
Members may recall the keynote speech at our last symposiumgiven by Peter Morris of the Association of Project Managers(APM). We said then that we must take up the challenge to workwith others to promote SE, particularly in its relations with keydisciplines like Project Management. Andrew Farncombe has sincebeen leading the Chapter's initiative on this and the firstresult was a joint meeting held with APM at IBM's offices inWarwick on 30th April 1997.
Peter Morris chaired the proceedings. Five of the sevenspeakers at the seminar were INCOSE members; there were aboutsixty people present in total. A formal synopsis of the meetinghas to be prepared by yours truly and presented at a largermeeting of the APM in Manchester in June, as part of their 25year anniversary celebrations. The seminar was, in fact, one of anumber held across the country on different aspects of ProjectManagement and the meeting in June will receive formal reportsfrom each of the seminars held.
The SE&PM report will be published in a later newsletter.The problem will be doing justice to the vast range and depth ofmaterial presented - a lot of which was of very high quality. Thematerial presented had not been co-ordinated beforehand, so therewas some overlap and plain contradiction but that simply added tothe richness of the material presented. Indeed, any personalsummary will inevitably miss out reflecting the full range ofthought provoking ideas and experiences which were revealed.
We need to give some thought to what further use might be madeof the material, especially in the wake of the APM's bigger eventin June. Perhaps a slot at our own AGM later this year might beappropriate- Andrew?
Some snippets jotted down during the seminar:
The dates are fixed for our first European Conference November11th to 13th inclusive. With this newsletter you will find a Callfor Papers giving more details.
The early work is proceeding on our very first InternationalSymposium in Brighton in June 1999. The dates are June 6-10 andthe venue the Brighton Metropole. Very few details are availableat this stage but planning has commenced and a great deal of worklies ahead.
Part of the fun of being part of a larger, American basedorganisation is that one can occasionally amuse one's friends andcolleagues with little American"isms". The following,recent exchange of e-mails between two UK members is an example.Uncontainable exclamations are shown in [brackets].
To: xxxxx,
Just to liven up your day, I wondered if you'd seen thedescription of Systems Engineering which the INCOSE (US) web pagepoints visitors to, at the moment. regards,
yyyyy
Seems we have a long way to go, Idaho!
Taken from the INCOSE Web Page:
What Is Systems Engineering?
Systems Engineering (SE) is a design and management discipline that is very useful in the designing and building of large or complex systems. It is a discipline that was conceived of and introduced by the U.S. Government [!!!!!!] and was developed to counteract the difficulties encountered in the engineering of increasingly large, complex, and inter-disciplinary systems. However, this discipline has also been evolved to
aid in the design of many other types of systems (Social Systems Design).
Some Of The Principles Of SE Based Design
Systems Engineering has as its basis a few simple but powerful principles. The first principle is iterative top-down (or hierarchical) design. This simply means that a complex system is designed by breaking a system down into its component subsystems and then repeating the process on each subsystem until off-the-shelf or easily designable components are all that remains. [!]
A second principle is bottom-up integration. This principle simply means that large systems are built by taking the lowest level components and putting them together one level at a time. Between each level's integration, the result of the previous level is tested to make sure it works. This way even very large systems can be easily built and bugs can be discovered and fixed before they are buried too deeply. In reality, bottom-up integration is the same as top-down design in reverse. [I can't believe anybody could say that!]
A third principle is that of the system life cycle. A life cycle is simply an understanding of the progression of a system from inception, to design, to construction, implementation, operation, maintenance, and eventually to its shutdown, disassembly and disposal. The system being designed has a life cycle; the systems engineering design and manufacturing process has a life cycle; each stage in each of these life cycles has a life cycle, and on and on iteratively. This principle aids in the understanding of "what needs to be done when and where", "how each small piece fits in the big picture", and aids in breaking large conceptual procedures or processes into smaller, more easily manageable chunks. This, alone, was found to be responsible for the elimination of a large amount of the errors that occur in the design of very large, complex systems.
The last principle I will mention here is that of "user perspective". Systems Engineering attempts to build systems that take into account what the user wants, needs, prefers, is happy with and is capable of. Every type of user of a potential system (operator, maintenance, management, etc.) MUST be involved in the design of that system. This is a simple factor of optimization -- who knows better than the user what they want, what they need and what they are capable of? [!!]
The reply received was as follows:
To: yyyyy,
I am appalled that INCOSE should present thathalf-baked, out-dated, inaccurate garbage to the world - but notreally surprised. INCOSE Central is still largely in thedeath-grip of the old-style defence-contractor. No matter thatthe DOD has recognised the error of their ways, no matter thatcommercial systems engineering is the order of the day, theystill cling to the old-fashioned, discredited ideas thatmasquerade under the guise of systems engineering. What isdescribed is, however, quite clearly full-blooded reductionismrun riot. The same guy has the cheek to define"system":-
"...a group of interacting, interrelated, orinterdependent elements that together form a complex whole. Allthe parts of a system are related to the same overall process,procedure, or structure, yet they are (most likely) all differentfrom one another and often perform completely differentfunctions".
...yet seems blissfully unaware that the SE method hesubscribes to cannot conceivably produce what he defines as a"system". His definition is at odds with INCOSE's own"approved" definition "A system is an interactingcombination of elements viewed in relation to function." -which I find totally incomprehensible anyway. Could it be thatthis author is a loose cannon? [On the official Web Page?]
By the way, the INCOSE definition is suggestive of a S/Wengineering origin, with its emphasis on function, and itinadvertently excludes all those people concerned with systemswhich might not be described by function, e.g. climatologists,ecologists, earth scientists, astronomers, criminologists, etc. -all of whom address systems that simply "are", withoutany overt reason or function. To define "system", oneshould surely not presume that all systems have function - itsimply isn't true. Like clouds in the sky and galaxies in theheavens, some systems simply "are".
Regards,
xxxxx
The serious side to all this is that the UK Chapter does notgenerally share these views of Systems Engineering and we need toreflect, as a Chapter, what we are going to do about this sort ofmuddled and, frankly, shallow thinking. To say that"bottom-up integration is, in reality, top-down design inreverse" is so far from the reality of systemic propertiesand how they have to be handled that we simply cannot just let itgo!
We might consider that this is just one view being expressedwithin INCOSE, but remember that it appears on the main Web Pageand seems to be intended for consumption by new visitors to theSite.
Here is an alternative outline of Systems Engineering fromwhich some will quickly discern the author! I put it forward as astarting point for a debate within the Chapter which we cannot,in my view, now avoid.
I define SE as "the art and science of creatingsystems", possibly with the addendum "using wholesystem, whole life principles". I believe it to be veryimportant in defining SE to encompass the widest breadth ofviewpoints and disciplines. The definition is "adapted"from that in the dictionary for "Architecture", and isintended to recognise both the art that many in industry believeis the soul of SE, as well as the science that many in academiabelieve is the brain of best practice. Relating the definition tothat for Architecture is sensible - in many ways, systemsengineers perform functions analogous to those of architects(from the Greek = "chief builders") Given the addendum,which you may consider necessary or not, you would then have toidentify those principles.
I define "system" as "an open set ofcomplementary, interacting parts with properties, capabilitiesand behaviours emerging both from the parts and from theirinteractions". That definition is comprehensive,theoretically sound, pragmatically useful, addresses dynamics(behaviours) and hits the key point of emergence due tointeraction - which most definitions simply miss out. Moreover,it points up the paradox - that a set of parts can be open tooutside influences and interchanges and yet remain stable. A farcry from the INCOSE Web Page.
I also present the First Principle of Systems and itsCorollary:-
"The properties, capabilities and behaviours of a systemderive both from its parts and from the interactions betweenthose parts."
"Altering the properties or behaviour of any of theparts, or any of their interactions, affects other parts, thewhole system and interacting systems"
Obvious stuff? Yes, but the US INCOSE description of SE doesnot stack up against these simple definitions. They provide asound basis both for understanding what systems and systemsengineering are about, and for testing:-
All the foregoing - definitions, principles, etc. - come as aset, or system. They are complementary, and you cannot alter onewithout affecting the others.
All contributions on any relevant subjectincluding technical, standards, book reviews, managementexperiences, information sources and conference reports arewelcome. Please send, via e-mail, fax, hard or soft copy to TheEditor, INCOSE UK Newsletter, c/o Peter Lister, AerosystemsInternational Ltd., West Hendford, Yeovil, BA20 2AL.
Tel: 01935 443000 Fax: 01935 443111 e-mail:
Last Updated: 23 January, 2000