Lessons learned - Using software-assisted systems engineering on large satellite development contracts
Lessons learned - Using software-assisted systems engineering on large satellite development contracts
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DOI：
10.1109/maes.2006.1635167
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发表时间：
2006-05-01
影响因子：
3.6
通讯作者：
Cooper, PA
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cooper, PA
多年来，世界国防工业在开发大型、复杂的硬件和软件系统方面已经相当精通。近年来，个人电脑的普及改变了我们的工作方式。此外，为促进系统工程而设计的工具最近已经足够成熟，可以开始对许多主要的系统开发工作产生重大影响。最后，政府“更快、更好、更便宜”的采办理念已经开始推动主承包商采用并行工程方法进行系统工程。这些事件的汇合对需求管理过程的灵活性和严谨性都产生了意想不到的影响。虽然成熟的需求和设计工具在整个设计过程中维护需求可追溯性方面有着巨大的希望，但桌面计算系统的广泛使用无意中使许多有经验的系统工程师陷入了草率的过程，因为现在在需求文档的软拷贝中进行需求更改似乎是一件简单的事情。如果没有强大的过程和管理支持，需求变更不可避免地开始在不兼容的工具和格式的广泛范围中派生。本文作者目前正在参与一项重大机密政府卫星开发工作的设计阶段。作为经验丰富的需求管理团队（在国防工业中拥有超过150年的综合经验）中不可或缺的一员，本文作者有机会观察到当有才华的工程师使用各种工具而没有一致的过程框架来实现并行工程时，团队直接进入许多系统工程的坑洞。因此，本文专门讨论了在大型卫星开发合同中建立软件辅助并行工程方法时出现的过程和实现挑战。
Over the years, the world's defense industries have become quite proficient at developing large, complex hardware and software systems. In recent years, the ubiquitous deployment of personal computers has changed the way we work. Additionally, tools designed to facilitate systems engineering have recently matured enough to start having a major impact on many major systems development efforts. Finally, the government's faster-better-cheaper acquisition philosophy has started driving prime contractors to a concurrent engineering approach toward systems engineering.This confluence of events has had unexpected impacts on both the flexibility and rigor of requirements management processes. While the maturing requirements and design tools hold great promise in maintaining requirements traceability throughout the design process, the widespread use of desktop computing systems has inadvertently lulled many experienced systems engineers into sloppy processes because it now appears to be a simple matter to make a requirements change in a softcopy of a requirements document. Without strong process and management support, requirements changes inevitably start being derived in a broad spectrum of incompatible tools and formats.This author is currently participating in the design phase of a major classified government satellite development effort. As an integral member of an extremely experienced requirements management team (boasting over 150 years of combined experience in the defense industry), this author has had the opportunity to watch the team navigate straight into many of the systems engineering potholes created when talented engineers implement concurrent engineering using a variety of tools without a consistent process framework.This paper, therefore, specifically addresses process and implementation challenges that arose when establishing a software-assisted concurrent-engineering approach on a large satellite development contract.