The systems engineering tool “Analysis of Alternatives,” or AoAs, impacts a broad range of concepts in systems engineering. In my experience, the inception of a project revolves around smart people—often program managers, technical directors, or business developers—discussing what they’ve heard or read or seen as an opportunity to do something …

Earlier this year, I did a webinar entitled “Getting Started on Enterprise Architectures.” In that webinar, I introduced the concept of operational architectures. The topic of operational architectures has come up in conversation lately and I thought this article would be a good time to explore the concept of operational …

The buzz in systems engineering today is all around supporting digital transformation. The focus has been centered on creating an “authoritative source of truth” and connecting the engineering lifecycle. As we accomplish system design and development, particularly in the model-based systems engineering (MBSE) environment, we are supporting the concept and …

All too often we think of systems engineering as a technique that is used to perform just the initial design of a system. We don’t appreciate the value of a system in later stages of the product lifecycle except as a means to inform the design of the replacement system. …