A Focus Area for the Systems Engineering Environment Category

Description:

Define and Improve the Systems Engineering Process involves those activities needed to establish, maintain, and improve processes required to accomplish systems engineering. Ideally, the organization should strive to develop or adopt a standard systems engineering process. Then improvements to the standard systems engineering process can benefit all programs that use the process. When an organization has developed or adopted a standard systems engineering process, this standard process can be tailored for use on each program to meet program-specific needs. Each tailored process becomes an instance of the standard process that is followed by a program to meet its unique business needs.

Process management and improvement involves establishing process related criteria and improvement criteria for systems engineering activities independent of any particular program. These criteria take the form of company policies and standards for the performance of systems engineering processes. Process management establishes engineering and quality standards and guidelines for systems engineering and for the tracking and improvement of the systems engineering process.

The organization should ensure that the standard systems engineering process it develops or adopts provides complete coverage of the EIA 632 standard [1] Processes for Engineering a System and is consistent with both IEEE 1220-1994 [2] and EIA 632 standards for systems engineering, and should examine other system engineering standards that may be appropriate for the organization based on the industry...