Book Image

Systems Engineering Demystified

By : Jon Holt
Book Image

Systems Engineering Demystified

By: Jon Holt

Overview of this book

Systems engineering helps us to understand, specify, and develop complex systems, and is applied across a wide set of disciplines. As systems and their associated problems become increasingly complex in this evermore connected world, the need for more rigorous, demonstrable, and repeatable techniques also increases. Written by Professor Jon Holt – an internationally recognized systems engineering expert – this book provides a blend of technical and business aspects you need to understand in order to develop successful systems. You'll start with systems engineering basics and understand the complexity, communication, and different stakeholders' views of the system. The book then covers essential aspects of model-based systems engineering, systems, life cycles, and processes, along with techniques to develop systems. Moving on, you'll explore system models and visualization techniques, focusing on the SysML, and discover how solutions can be defined by developing effective system design, verification, and validation techniques. The book concludes by taking you through key management processes and systems engineering best practices and guidelines. By the end of this systems engineering book, you'll be able to confidently apply modern model-based systems engineering techniques to your own systems and projects.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Systems Engineering
4
Section 2: Systems Engineering Concepts
8
Section 3: Systems Engineering Techniques
14
Section 4: Next steps

Chapter 4: Life Cycles

This chapter introduces the key concept of the life cycle and its relationship to systems engineering. Understanding and managing life cycles is crucial to the success of any systems engineering initiative.

The concept of a life cycle is relatively simple; however, there is a lot of hidden complexity associated with life cycles and, as a consequence, a lot of ambiguity and misunderstanding in this area. There are two main areas of misunderstanding – the types of life cycle and the interactions between life cycles, both of which will be discussed in this chapter.

In this chapter, we will study the following topics:

  • Defining the main concepts associated with life cycles: The chapter begins by defining the main concepts associated with life cycles by expanding the MBSE ontology that has been developed so far in this book.
  • Discussing the different types of life cycles that may exist, along with examples: The different types of life cycles...