UK Chapter

The first meeting of the INCOSE UK Agile Working Group will be at IBM Warwick on Thursday 7 August starting at 10am and with an intended finish of 4pm. I know that is not convenient for everyone; I will try to ensure that any important points are captured so that we can share them with anyone unable to attend.

Please can you let me know if you intend to attend, or if you are sending someone else.

I would appreciate it if you could come prepared. Some things I would like you to have thought about in advance are:

1. What is the driving force behind your interest in Agile for Systems Engineering (what need are you addressing)
2. What do you want to get out of the Working Group
3. What are your current references for understanding Agile

What I hope to get out of this first meeting is a goal statement for the working group and a plan for starting work on at least one output (possibly a z-guide)

If you have any really good references, then it would be really helpful if you could print out some notes, links, abstracts, references, or whatever you have, with enough copies to go around. I am hoping that by the meeting, I will have a plan for a collaboration space, either on the INCOSE UK domain, or elsewhere, so that we can share information easily.

I will have some information about the INCOSE UK expectations of a Working Group, and we will have an update from the INCOSE International Agile Systems Working Group.

Hazel Woodcock

click here for a link to directions

I am pleased to announce our first event for the Autumn session:

Whole Life Cost Modelling for the Tube, Stephen Jones, LU, 1700H for 1730H, Wednesday, 10th September 2014, RSSB, Block 2, Angel Square, 1 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NY.

Stephen Jones is a Systems Engineer at London Underground. He will describe how systems thinking is being applied to whole life cost and some of the practical problems encountered. The presentation will examine the enterprise-level requirement and will review different solutions taken from UK history and overseas practice. For the New Tube for London, Stephen will describe how LU are scaling the whole life cost approach up to line level and how this can focus development on those key activities that drive cost over the programme and asset life cycles.

There is no charge for attendance at this event but places must be booked in advance. Bookings for this event are now open. To book, obtain directions or for any other questions, please contact me at bruce.elliott@arbutus-tc.co.uk or on +44 (0)7970 694043.

At the inaugural INCOSE Agile SE working group, the group identified that there was no clear and universally agreed definition of Agile Systems Engineering. The group agreed to hold an initial workshop to understand what is meant by ‘Agile SE’. This workshop will use Soft Systems Methodology to understand the different worldviews of Agile SE, and if time permits to analyse the differences between worldview. The workshop is open to all INCOSE UK individual and CAB members. We are interested in people who have applied agile SE methods, who have a business need to apply agile SE or just an interest in the subject. No prior experience of Soft Systems is required.

This is a working session of the Agile SE working group rather than a training event of management session. Participants will be expected to work together to develop a series of alternative views of what Agile SE is.

Duncan Kemp has kindly offered to facilitate this workshop and Thales are providing a great location.

We will need to know your nationality and your company name and address if you intend to attend. Please register through this site and we will pick up the other details in follow up conversations.

In 2000, Sarah Sheard and Chris Miller published “The Shangri-La of ROI” on the subject of the value provided by Systems Engineering (SE). In the opening paragraph, they summarized: “This paper shows that: 1) There are no “hard numbers”; 2) There will be no hard numbers in the foreseeable future; 3) If there were hard numbers, there wouldn’t be a way to apply them to your situation; and 4) if you did use such numbers, no one would believe you anyway.”#However, time has moved on, and recent studies by Eric Honour and by the National Defence Industries Association (led by Joseph Elm) have started to quantify the correlation between SE practices and business benefit. Sheard and Miller’s points (1) and (2) are  therefore seen to have been overcome. However, the study results need careful interpretation and consideration of the organizational context in which they apply. This presentation will cover some empirical rules for consideration of point (3), and start to address the barriers to adoption of point (4).

An outline of the presentation is as follows:
- Different models for the business value of SE
- The conclusions of the relevant studies, and implications for the ROI in SE
- The dependence of the business benefit correlation with  project complexity
and individual / organisational competence
- The evolution of maturity in SE praxis, by individuals and organisations
- A possible interpretative structural model of achieving maximum value of SE through improvement of praxis

For more information and to book please contact Luminita Ciocoiu
Tel: 01509 635 208
Email:L.Ciocoiu@lboro.ac.uk

Continuous engineering describes the essential capability that engineering organisations must foster to successfully develop the increasingly sophisticated and connected products and systems that markets and customers now demand. Continuous engineering isn’t a wholesale replacement of systems engineering or existing techniques such as agile and lean; instead it is rethinking of the key practices needed to scale development to meet future engineering demands—practices such as continuous verification, unlocking engineering knowledge and strategic reuse.

If you want to join the conversation about a better way to do things, then join this webcast on 29th October to hear Jon Holt of INCOSE and Greg Gorman & Barclay Brown of IBM discuss continuous engineering and its relevance to the systems engineering profession.

To register click here

The aim of this meeting will be to consolidate where we are and get to a point where, at the next meeting, we can finalise the characterisation variables and Use Cases we are going to use in our analysis of techniques etc.

1.       Review plan and current status
2.       Review and agree characterisation variables
3.       Review and agree service type categorisations
4.       Review existing Use Cases
5.       Review Use Case template
6.       Discuss generic Use Case examples
7.       Discuss output format
8.       Agree actions for next meeting

Notes from Previous Meetings are at

http://www.incosewiki.org.uk/Service_Systems_Engineering/index.php?title=Main_Page

After two workshop meetings, we return to presentation-mode with a talk from one of INCOSE UK's most influential members, who will speak on issues of direct concern to Enteprise Systems Engineering.

“Addressing Root Causes through Enterprise-level Collaboration”.

Mike Wilkinson is the Technical Director of Niteworks, where he is on secondment from Atkins. He has a first degree in physics and a PhD in theoretical physics from King’s College London. He is past president of the UK Chapter of INCOSE and is currently their Academic Director. He is co-chair of both INCOSE’s UK and International Architecture Working Groups. Within Atkins he is a Technical Director in the Defence Business Unit and was first chair of the Atkins Systems Technical Network. He is a visiting professor at the University of Loughborough, where he is associated with the Engineering System of Systems (ESoS) group.

This topic should be of interest to a wide cross-section of INCOSE membership, who are encouraged to attend even if they have not previously been involved with the ESE Interest Group. There wil be ample opportunity for discussion with Mike and between attendees. If previous meetings are any guide, this will be lively, informative and stimulating.

Time wil be taken at the end of the meeting to discuss future plans, in particular the way ahead for the workshop topic: ESE vs SOSE. 

The usual rules for booking in apply: to be admitted at reception, please book in via this site by close of business on Friday 4th July

Agenda

1 Introduction / Attendees
2 Working Group Member Outcome Requirements and Schedule to complete
3 Previous minutes and outputs / Review and discussion of work being done
3.1 Risk in Service Provision
3.2 Characterisation of Services
3.3 Product-Service Systems
3.4 Review of Cambridge Services Alliance Documents
3.5 Review SEBoK entries
3.6 Update of Plan
4 Communications
5 Dates for future meetings
6 AOB