PPI SyEN SPOTLIGHT: INCOSE IS-2021 Overviews and analyses from the recent INCOSE International Symposium by the PPI Training & Consulting Team
Observations and implications from IS-2021 By Robert Halligan, FIE Aust CPEng IntPE (Aus); Editor-in-Chief, PPI SyEN; Managing Director, Project Performance International An interesting panel “To Vee or not to Vee”, involved a debate on the usefulness of the Vee model. Unfortunately, however, the debate took place without defining which Vee model. The original Vee model as invented by NASA in the 1960s, repeated by Rook in 1979, then adapted to the double Vee by Fosberg and Mooz was subsequently subjected to some elaborations (for example, the German Vee model) and many mutations. The actual Vee model is not a process model at all except for its verification content, and it certainly isn’t a lifecycle model, nor was it ever intended to be. Unfortunately, the attempts to morph the Vee into a process model, producing what I have described as mutations, were behind the points of debate without the debaters acknowledging so. Iteration, stakeholder interaction, and timing relationships were concerns with the Vee expressed in the debate. These concerns are all dealt with in my Wedge Model, which applies to any development process, including agile, whilst maintaining the purity of purpose of the Vee. The official theme of the conference was “Accelerating through Adversity”. A more general theme that was evident throughout was recognition of the exponential increase in the complexity of systems, including sociotechnical and social systems incorporating widespread interconnection to form even bigger systems, and the need to accommodate this increase in complexity in our approaches to engineering. Whilst sharing this view, I left the INCOSE IS frustrated that the bigger August 2021
problem remains that we continue to graduate engineers without even the most basic of engineering understandings, for example - that design creates requirements on solution elements, how to write a decent requirement, how to carry out a trade-off study, the difference between control flow and item flow in functional modeling, and why they all matter. I would describe today’s engineering as pinnacles of excellence in a sea of mediocrity. Those pinnacles of excellence are the organizations and projects that are practicing systems engineering well, not as a mindless rule book, a one-size-fits-all process, but as a set of mainly heuristic principles and a set of process tools that are used selectively, driven by value. The sea of mediocrity to which I refer is populated by graduate engineers with education and work experience devoid of systems engineering principles and tools. That malaise is changing, but at nowhere near the needed rate. Preaching systems engineering at an INCOSE conference is preaching to the choir. But beyond the choir are 15 million other engineers who would deliver much better results by using systems engineering principles, heuristics, and process tools in their work. It is not that we don’t produce valuable products, we do, but the difference between “what is” and “what could be” is huge. Compelling evidence of my assertion lies in the landmark 2012 SEI study (Elm) on the value of systems engineering, and in many other studies. Look out for some papers in PPI SyEN on this topic soon.
[Contents]
27
