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38 views3 pages

Vignette

Uploaded by

Paulo Cabeceira
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Guidance for General Managers 82

Part 7:
• provides case studies and vignettes to illustrate how the parts have been used in similar situations in successes to
emulate and failures to avoid.

Vignette: Emerging Nation Satellite System


Tom Lee is General Manager for Telecommunications in a ministry of a large emerging nation. The government
does not have much existing capability for developing capital-intensive infrastructure projects. The government
decides to use a major investment in technology as a vehicle to develop national enterprise capabilities.
To accomplish this, the minister assigns Tom to lead a project to develop a national satellite system for
telecommunications and earth resources observation. Tom understands that this is a very complex system and
decides to do some background research. During this research, Tom discovers the SEBoK and decides that is may be
a useful resource.
Tom first reads:
• Part 1 for an overview and pointers to relevant sections of Parts 3 through 6,
• portions of Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6 to learn about the life cycle, nature, scope, and management aspects of
enterprise SE,
• the successful satellite system case studies in Part 7 (Global Positioning System, Miniature Seeker Technology
Integration spacecraft) for approaches to emulate, and
• the satellite system case study in Part 7 which describes development and integration problems (Hubble Space
Telescope) for pitfalls to avoid.
Tom continues by carefully reading Part 5. He realizes that he must simultaneously develop individuals, teams, and
the enterprise. The knowledge areas (KAs) from Part 5 give useful background. For this project, Tom enlists both a
proven multi-national satellite SE company and some of his brightest aerospace systems engineers. Tom expects his
local systems engineers to learn from the SE company, and he plans to use them as the core group of the national
satellite system as it ultimately develops and operates.
He realizes that correct problem definition and requirements setting will be critical first steps. He carefully reads the
Concept Definition and System Definition KAs. As his team develops the Stakeholder Needs and Requirements and
the System Requirements, he makes sure they follow good practices as listed in the SEBoK. Once architectural
designs have been proposed and approved, he requires his team to perform cost-benefit tradeoff analyses of
alternative solutions.
Thus prepared, Tom is confident that he can formulate and execute a successful approach.

Vignette: Commercial Safety Equipment Company


Maria Moreno is General Manager at Safety First Equipment Company, specialists in hardware-intensive safety
equipment. Maria’s background is in electromechanical systems. Safety First is highly successful but beginning to
lose market share to competitors who offer software-intensive capabilities and user amenities.
Maria is preparing an initiative to make Safety First into a leading software-intensive safety equipment provider. She
decides to make the SEBoK a primary resource for gathering concepts and insights for the initiative. She begins by
skimming through all of Parts 1 through 6, both to become familiar with the SEBoK itself and to start organizing her
thoughts on SE.
Now Maria is ready to focus on subjects of prime importance to her task. Here are those subjects, listed with the
places in the SEBoK where she finds information about them.
In Systems Engineering and Software Engineering in Part 6:
• the nature of software,
• differences between hardware and software architectures and practices and
Guidance for General Managers 83

• key aspects of managing software teams.


In the article Human Systems Integration in the Systems Engineering and Quality Attributes knowledge area, also in
Part 6:
• the SE of user amenities.
In the Next Generation Medical Infusion Pump Case Study in Part 7:
• the software aspects of safety practices, such as software fault tree analysis and failure modes and effects analysis
and
• overall approaches for concurrent engineering of the hardware, software, and human factors aspects of
safety-critical equipment.
In the Medical Radiation Case Study in Part 7:
• hardware-software pitfalls to avoid in safety-critical equipment.
Maria chose the last two items from among the case studies in Part 7 because being safety-critical, they contain
lessons directly applicable to her initiative at Safety First.
With this framework of concepts and practical information in place, Maria begins assembling a core team of Safety
First systems engineers, complemented by external experts in software and human factors engineering. Maria wants
the team to begin by developing a shared vision. To that end, she asks them to read the portions of the SEBoK that
she has found most valuable in assessing the challenges of transitioning Safety First into a leading
software-intensive, user-friendly safety equipment provider.

Summary
For the general manager whose organization includes systems engineers, the relationship between SE, systems
development, project management, and life cycle support is a central concern. The SEBoK provides insights and
guidance about this and other aspects of SE principle and practice, and explains the role of SE in a variety of
management challenge areas and application domains.
The SEBoK complements the general management guidance available in sources such as the PMBOK® Guide (PMI
2013).

References

Works Cited
PMI. 2013. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), 5th ed. Newtown Square,
PA, USA: Project Management Institute (PMI).

Primary References
PMI. 2013. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), 5th ed. Newtown Square,
PA, USA: Project Management Institute (PMI).

Additional References
P. Bourque and R.E. Fairley. Eds. 2014. Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, Version 3.0. Los
Alamitos, CA, USA: IEEE Computer Society. Available at: http://www.swebok.org
Booher, H. 2003. Handbook of Human-Systems Integration. New York, NY, USA: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Hooks, I.F. and K. Farry. 2000. Customer Centered Products: Creating Successful Products Through Smart
Requirements Management. New York, NY, USA: AMACON/American Management Association.
Guidance for General Managers 84

Pew, R. and A. Mavor. 2007. Human-System Integration in the System Development Process. Washington, D.C.,
USA: The National Academies Press.

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SEBoK v. 2.9, released 20 November 2023

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