Last month I wrote a blog post about capturing and managing operational architectures. In this article, I will explore how to plan for and manage the transition from the current (or “As-Is Architecture”) to a future (or “To-Be Architecture”) configuration. While this can seem like a daunting proposition, don’t be …

Grappling with complexity is a challenging task. But that is the world of systems engineering. The problems we face are complex, and they demand complex solutions. Managing that complexity in a way that solves the complex problem while keeping all of the aspects of the problem and potential solutions visible …

As companies attempt to transform their design processes into a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) environment, they often find that the road to transformation is less than smooth. Many of the bumps and potholes in that road stem from the tendency to pick up on a term without being very rigorous …

The Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge* defines a model as “a simplified representation of a system at some particular point in time or space intended to promote understanding of the real system.” There is broad acceptance that models are limited or simplified representations of a reality of interest. There is …