Checklist

Last Wednesday, you challenged me to produce a checklist that would include every item that I might want you to put in your class project documents. You said you were frustrated because you did not know what to put in these documents. I can't make a checklist that would include everything, but for a start I will say that I want everything that we covered last semester. This includes things we said in class, things that were on the slides and things that were in the readings. Here is a partial list.

August 20, 2007
Title: What is Systems Engineering?
Including the two dozen SE tasks listed in the Frankenstein table.
Textbook Ref: Chapman, Bahill and Wymore, Chapter 1
Course web site: What Is Systems Engineering?
Slides: What Is Systems Engineering? 25 Mbytes

August 22, 2007
Title: The System Design Process
Textbook Ref: Chapman, Bahill and Wymore, Chapter 2
Published paper: Daniels, J., Werner, P. W., and Bahill, A. T., Quantitative methods for tradeoff analyses, Systems Engineering, 4(3), 190-212, 2001, with a correction Systems Engineering, 8(1):93, 2005.

August 22, 2007
Title: The 8 Systems Engineering Documents
Course web site: The 8 Systems Engineering Documents
Slides: The 8 Systems Engineering Documents

August 22, 2007
Title: Difficulty Distinguishing Product from Process
Slides: Distinguishing between Product and Process
Published paper: Abadi, C. D. and Bahill, A. T., The difficulty in distinguishing product from process, Systems Engineering, 6(2): 108-115, 2003.

I no longer ask for separate process and product documents, but I do expect you to differentiate between your product and process requirements.

August 27, 2007
Title: System Modeling
Textbook Ref: Chapman, Bahill and Wymore, Chapter 3

August 27, 2007
Title: The Similar Process
Slides: The SIMILAR Process (slides)
The SIMILAR Process (MS Word)
Published paper: Bahill, A. T. and Gissing, B., Re-evaluating systems engineering concepts using systems thinking, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, 28(4), 516-527, 1998.

August 29, 2007
Title: Comparison of Design Tools
Slides: Comparison of Engineering Design Tools
Published paper: Bahill, A. T., Alford, M., Bharathan, K., Clymer, J. Dean, D. L., Duke, J., Hill, G., LaBudde, E., Taipale, E. and Wymore, A. W., The design methods comparison project, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, 28(1), 80-103, 1998.

September 5, 2007
Title: Unified Systems Engineering Process with UML and SysML
Slides: The Unified Systems Engineering Process Based on UML and SysML
Published paper: Bahill, A. T. and Daniels, J., Using object-oriented and UML tools for hardware design: a case study, Systems Engineering, 6(1): 28-48, 2003.

September 10 and 12, 2007
Title: Decision Making and Tradeoff Studies
Slides: Decision Making and Tradeoff Studies
Tradeoff Studies, Mathematical Analysis

September 17, 2007
Title: Discovering System Requirements
Textbook Ref: Chapman, Bahill and Wymore, Chapter 4
Slides: Discovering System Requirements
This includes principles of good requirements and handling of TBDs.

September 19, 2007
Title: Traditional Requirements in Use Cases
Slides: Requirements in Use Cases
Published paper: Daniels, J. and Bahill, A. T., The hybrid process combines traditional requirements and use cases, Systems Engineering, 7(4):303-319, 2004.

September 24, 2007
Title: Case Studies and Metrics
Slides: Case Studies and Metrics for Systems Engineering Design
Published paper: see course notes

September 26, 2007
Title: System Design is NP-complete
Slides: The System Design Process is NP-Complete
Published paper: Chapman, W. L., Rozenblit, J. and Bahill, A. T., Systems design is an NP-complete problem, Systems Engineering, 4(3), 222-229, 2001.

September 26, 2007
Title: Metrics for System Design
Slides: part two of Case Studies and Metrics...
Published paper: see course notes

October 1, 2007
Title: Pinewood Derby
Textbook Ref: Chapman, Bahill and Wymore, Chapter 5

October 1, 2007
Title: Risk Analysis of a Pinewood Derby
Textbook Ref: Chapman, Bahill and Wymore, Chapter 5
Slides: Risk Analysis of a Pinewood Derby: A Case Study
Published paper: Bahill, A. T. and Karnavas, W. J, Risk analysis of a pinewood derby: a case study, Systems Engineering, 3(3), 143-155, 2000.
Also see course notes

October 3, 2007
Title: Sensitivity Analysis, a System Validation Tool
Slides: Sensitivity Analysis a Powerful Validation Tool
Your sensitivity analysis must be better than that for Pinewood in Chapman's book. The sensitivity analyses for the Spin Coach and the PopUp Coach are all right.

October 8 and 10, 2007
Title: Roadmap to Business Excellence
Material on course web site? yes
Slides: Bruce Gissing's Introduction
The Roadmap to Business Excellence
You Must write a business case for your product.

October 15, 2007
Title: When are Observable States Necessary?
Slides: Reusability and COTS: a theory paper
Observable States May be Necessary When Using COTS Products
Published papers: Wymore, A. W., and Bahill, A. T., When can we safely reuse systems, upgrade systems, or use COTS components? Systems Engineering, 3(2), 82-95, 2000.
Botta, R., Bahill, Z. and Bahill, A. T., When are observable states necessary? Systems Engineering, 9(3): 228-240, 2006.

October 17, 2007
Title: Test
Textbook: Chapman, Bahill and Wymore, Chapters 1 to 5
Only one purpose of a test is to evaluate student performance. A more important task is to teach. Now in 2008 you should go back to this test, read the solutions and then re-read the papers on Systems Engineering. There is a lot to learn from some very good people. It will not be a waste of your time.

October 22 and 24, 2007
Title: Designing the Boeing 747
Textbook: Sutter and Spenser 747-Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation,
Of course, we want you to use Boeing's safe design philosophy and its key attributes.

October 29 and 31, 2007
Title: Tinker Toy Tower Design
I expect to see minutes of meetings with your customer. Include all of the questions that you prepared in advance. Suscinct quotes are appropriate. An example of minutes of a meeting with the customer is given on page 127 of Chapman, Bahill and Wymore (1992). An example of a meeting log is given on page 82 of http://www.sie.arizona.edu/sysengr/sie554/SpinCoach/IBPS/ProductDocs.pdf.

The take home message of this exercise is, "Make sure that you consult with all of the stakeholders."

November 5, 2007
Title: Fundamental Principles of Good Design
Slides: Principles of Good Design
Published paper: see course notes
You should treat this paper as a checklist to make sure you have covered all of these principles in your documents.

November 7, 2007
Title: Valid Models Require Defined Levels
Slides: What Are Levels?
Your documents must explain the levels of your models. And now that we have red the MDA book, we should have mappings between them.

November 14, 2007
Title: A Prioritization Process
Slides: Why Priortize?
Everything in your documents Must be priortized.

November 19, 2007
Title: A Zachman Framework Populated with baseball Models
Slides: A Zachman Framework Populated with Baseball Models
Published paper: Bahill, A. T., Botta, R., and Daniels, J., The Zachman framework populated with baseball models, Journal of Enterprise Architecture, 2(4): 50-68, 2006.

If you want to impress someone with what you know about missiles, then collect every missile model you can find at Raytheon and put it into a Zachman framework for Raytheon's enterprise.

November 21, 2007
Title: Mental Models
Published paper: last paper in your Classnotes
Your documents Absolutely Must Mandatory include principles from this paper. This is not an optional requirement.

November 26, 2007
Title: Famous System Failures
Slides: Famous Failures
Published paper: Bahill, A. T. and Henderson, S. J., Requirements development, verification and validation exhibited in famous failures, Systems Engineering, 8(1):1-14, 2005.

November 28, 2007
Title: Ameliorating Mental Mistakes in Tradeoff Studies
Slides: Ameliorating Mistakes in Tradeoff Studies
Published paper: Smith, E. D., Son, Y. J., Piattelli-Palmarini, M. and Bahill, A. T., Ameliorating Mental Mistakes in Tradeoff Studies, Systems Engineering, 10(3): 222-240, 2007.
Addressing each of the mental mistakes in this papers is a Mandatory part of your documentation.

In addition we want a Product Position Statement and a Business Model. Trivial examples are given with the Spin Coach and the PopUp Coach.

At the beginning if the semester I asked you to write an agreement with your BrainTrust advisor stating what you were going to deliver in May. I also asked you to design your missile so that if it falls into enemy hands, it cannot be used against us.

Now that we are halfway through SIE-654, I would expect to see UML, SysML and Wymorian models in Document 7. Of course we should have a discussion of what architectural decisions you made. I would like to see a discussion of why you choose to use or not use DoDAF on your project.

Would you like to go to Bahill's main Systems Engineering page?

This site is owned by Terry Bahill (520) 621-6561 It was last changed on March 8, 2008.