The Reception of Model-Based Systems Engineering by Adopters—Experiences From Three Case Studies in Swedish Industry

Abstract

Systems Engineering (SE) is currently undergoing a paradigm shift towards Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). Motivated by changes in system complexity and increasing stakeholder expectations, models are a means of leveraging abstraction principles in addition to tool and automation support through explicit formalisation of development and design artefacts. Many organisations are now looking to adopt model-based technologies, due to these perceived and expected benefits. At the same time, there are reported challenges during MBSE adoption. In this article we report on three MBSE proof-of-concept investigations in three distinct case studies in Swedish industry. We overview each of these studies, and summarise their main motivation, implementation, and evaluation. Using these distinct studies as a baseline, we perform a comparative analysis between each case study towards MBSE adoption challenges and success factors. This article presents this comparative analysis and extracts the experiences of the practitioners involved during the studies. Furthermore, we provide a list of seven adoption criteria (legacy, automation, workload, transparency, extensibility, navigation, and intuitiveness) that can be used by other practitioners looking to investigate successful MBSE adoption.