Whether we realize it or not, our brains will consider behavior when contemplating requirements. How, then, can we formalize this process? How do we ensure we address the functionality of our systems as we consider requirements? As systems engineers, we develop a mental model of requirements analysis based on the …

In my blog post last month, Understanding Your System, I discussed the importance of the system context and system decomposition when defining the physical design of a system. This month I would like to additionally emphasize the role of functional analysis to define the functional design and explain how MBSE …

Ask any engineer what they do, and once you drill down past the knee-jerk response of “build stuff/make stuff” to the real essence of their profession, they will tell you that they “solve problems.” The very word “engineer” is rooted in the Latin words ingenare (to create, contrive, devise) and …

What is a metamodel? The English prefix “meta” comes directly from the Greek meaning “beyond” or “after.” That has been extended in English usage to mean “about,” connoting a higher level of abstraction. Thus, “meta-cognition” is “thinking about thinking” and a metamodel is a model of a model. Why have …