Systems engineers and systems architects have many architectures of which they need to be aware: there’s the architecture of the system-of-interest (or system under design), the architecture of the larger system in which the system-of-interest must operate (the context system), and the architecture of the enabling system (the enterprise or …

After 15 years of practice, there is still a great deal of confusion surrounding model-based systems engineering – not only what MBSE is but also the difficulty of application. Some see MBSE as simple, the only possible way they could imagine engineering a system of any scale. Others perceive it …

When engineers speak about model-based systems engineering, or MBSE, the term “model” is used in many ways. Unfortunately, this only creates confusion between systems engineers, modeling and simulation engineers, and detail engineers. We all use models, so does this mean we’re now model-based? No. Remember that MBSE was devised as …

Complexity is nothing new to systems engineers and managers. The discipline of systems engineering evolved to improve our ability to deal with scale, interdependency, and complexity in systems development. Few systems engineers would doubt that complexity is increasing every year. The rate of change, the increasing interdependence and adaptability of …