Communicating between technical disciplines or between technical and non-technical parties has a high risk of misinterpretations simply because of the specialized nature of our professions. There are several best practices that can help project teams communicate effectively.
1. Establish and use common lexicon for the team. According to INCOSE 2015, "one of the systems engineer's first and most important responsibilities on a project is to establish a nomenclature and terminology that support clear, unambiguous communications" (Pg 4). INCOSE adopted the below documents as its primary dictionaries.
- IEEE/ISO/IEC System and Software engineering - lifecycle processes 15288.
- IEEE/ISO/IEC Systems and software engineering – Vocabulary 24765. This vocabulary is the dictionary for the System and Software engineering - lifecycle processes 15288.
- The SE Vocab is a single source database for systems engineering terms listed in the IEEE/ISO/IEC Documents.
2. Establish a Project Life Cycle that Defines the Major Phases and Milestones of the Project
3. Establish an Integrated Work Breakdown Structure and Dictionary
4. Adopt a set of Standard Processes