Systems Engineering Processes

John Lillard

Systems Engineering as Defined by ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2015

Systems and software engineering - System life cycle processes 15288:2018 is published under a joint project by ISO, IEC, and IEEE.  Figure 1.1 is adopted from (ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288) depicts the processes defined within 15288:2015.

Figure 1: Adopted from INCOSE 2015 Figure 1.2
The processes in 15288 are divided into four functional categories: Technical, Management, Agreement and Organizational project-enabling.

Technical Processes

The technical processes of 15288: 2015 describe the activities directly associated with the definition, design, development, delivery and support of the system.  Each process plays a role in the end to end life cycle of a system. Remember that a SE team should apply all of theses processes in the development of a systems solution regardless of the problem or the solution. What changes from project to project is the level of effort and complexity of engineering data created for the project. The Activity Hierarchy Model in Figure 2 represents the processes depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 2 is generated from a MBSE tool based on the information shown in Figure 1.  Entering all of the processes into a MBSE tool transforms the static diagram in Figure 1 into data entities allowing the entities represented by the processes to be used in multiple models. See the MBSE article for more information.

Figure 2: Technical Processes Activity Tree Diagram. Adapted from ISO/EC/IEEE 2015
The Technical Processes define the activities directly associated with system lifecycle.

Technical Management Processes

The Technical Management Processes define the activities associated with the management of the SE project and its information.
 

    Agreement Processes

    The Agreement process area is intended to describe how the systems engineering IPT is to acquire goods and services external to the IPT.
    CABOKtip: The 15288 Agreement Process area is similar to the PMBOK Project Procurement Management Knowledge Area which includes the process areas: Plan Procurement Management, Conducting Procurement and Controlling Procurement knowledge areas within the  PMI Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) (PMI 2017).
     

      Organization Project Enabling Processes

      The Organizational Project Enabling Process Area describes the methods performed by the IPT's parent organization to establish and maintain mechanisms to support all projects executed by the organization.

      CABOKtip: The Organizational Process Area area is analogous to the Organizational Process Assets within the PMBoK (PMI 2017).