Wayfinding Through Change

Abstract

As systems grow larger, more complex, and begin to incorporate expectations of the deployment environment, infrastructure, and multiple subsystems, a disciplined approach is essential to preserving the understanding of the product vision. Once the purview of big industrial development houses, the practices of systems engineering and a systems thinking mindset are enablers of development productivity, ensuring clear elaboration of stories and acceptance criteria, incorporation of overarching requirements such as regulatory compliance, ongoing management of system margins, and understanding and maintaining the right level of testing. Regardless of your choice of scaling framework or tools, you can evolve and tell the story of the system so that all members of all teams can drive to a common valuable result. In particular, this presentation draws on the recent work of the NDIA Systems Engineering Division to update how technical capabilities are acquired, managed, and evaluated to responsively field system functionality at the speed of relevance.