BKCASE: Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering

1. BKCASE: Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering Status Update Hillary Sillitto,Thales UK Brief to National Defence Industries Council Systems Engineering & Open Architectures Working group

2. What is BKCASE? • Project led by Stevens Institute of Technology and Naval Postgraduate School to create two primary products: • Body of Knowledge in systems engineering (SEBoK) • Graduate Reference Curriculum in Systems Engineering (GRCSE) • Started in September 2009 and will run through 2012 • Intended for world-wide use • Not intended to be used directly for accreditation

3. BKCASE Vision and Objectives Vision “Systems Engineering competency models, certification programs, textbooks, graduate programs, and related workforce development initiatives around the world align with BKCASE.” Objectives Create a SEBoK that is globally recognized by the SE community as the authoritative BoK for the SE discipline. Create a graduate reference curriculum for SE (GRCSE – pronounced “Gracie”) that is globally recognized by the SE community as the authoritative guidance for graduate programs in SE. Facilitate the global alignment of related workforce development initiatives with SEBoK and GRCSE. Transfer stewardship of SE BoK and GRCSE to INCOSE and the IEEE after BKCASE publishes version 1.0 of those products, including possible integration into their certification, accreditation, and other workforce development and education initiatives. 3

4. 37 Authors as of April 2010 30-31 March 2010 4

5. Our Partners

6. SEBoK Value Proposition There is no authoritative source that defines and organizes the knowledge of the SE discipline, including its methods, processes, practices, and tools. The resulting knowledge gap creates unnecessary inconsistency and confusion in understanding the role of SE in projects and programs; and in defining SE products and processes.  SEBOK will fill that gap, becoming the “go to” SE reference. The process of creating the SEBoK will help to build community consensus on the boundaries and context of SE thinking and to use this to help understand and improve the ability of management, science and engineering disciplines to work together. Having a common way to refer to SE knowledge will facilitate communication among systems engineers and provide a baseline for competency models, certification programs, educational programs, and other workforce development initiatives around the world.  Having common ways to identify metadata about SE knowledge will facilitate search and other automated actions on SE knowledge. 6

7. GRCSE Value Proposition • There is no authoritative source to guide universities in establishing the outcomes graduating students should achieve with a master’s degree in SE, nor a guidance source on reasonable entrance expectations, curriculum architecture, or curriculum content. • This gap in guidance creates unnecessary inconsistency in student proficiency at graduation, makes it harder for students to select where to attend, and makes it harder for employers to evaluate prospective new graduates. • GRCSE will fill that gap, becoming the “go to” reference to develop, modify, and evaluate graduate programs in SE. • Initial focus is on systems engineering centric programs. • Approach to Domain centric programs is still under discussion. 7

8. http://www.BKCASE.org/about-bkcase/bkcase-story/

9. What Has Software Engineering Done to Address Similar Challenges?

10. SWEBOK and GSwE2009

11. SWEBOK • SWEBOK is a way of organizing all the knowledge that is within the software engineering (SwE) discipline • It is a hierarchical structure for the knowledge and references to key documents stating the knowledge as of 2004 • It was developed by a community of authors and reviewers from around the world • It is static – it has not changed since it was published • A refresh project is underway to produce a new version in 2010 www.SWEBOK.org

12. 11 Knowledge Areas, First 5

13. 11 Knowledge Areas, Last 6

14. Lessons Learned: GSwE2009 Involve professional societies from the very beginning Build a highly diverse author team from the start Create a sense of camaraderie among the author team Actively seek reviewers from global stakeholders Hold face-to-face workshops at least once every 3 months Establish a project plan early but expect it to evolve – most of the labor is voluntary and reviewers will throw curve balls

15. BKCASE Revisited • Project led by Stevens Institute of Technology and Naval Postgraduate School that is creating two primary products: • Body of Knowledge in systems engineering (SEBoK) • Graduate Reference Curriculum in Systems Engineering (GRCSE) • Started in September 2009 and will run through 2012 • Intended for world-wide use • Not intended to be used directly for accreditation

16. BKCASE Staffing • BKCASE is an open, collaborative project with international participation sought from academia, industry, government, related projects, and professional societies. • Art Pyster (Stevens) is Principal Investigator (PI); Dave Olwell (NPS) is Co-Principal Investigator. Alice Squires, Stephanie Enck and Nicole Hutchinson are key researchers. • BKCASE sought 30-40 active volunteer authors + several hundred volunteer reviewers. Nearly 40 authors have already signed up.

17. More BKCASE Staffing • Each participating professional society will provide at least one active author. (INCOSE has agreed to participate and fund (T&S costs of) 3 authors including H Sillitto. IEEE Systems Council has 2: John Baras and Ken Nidiffer.) • Authors are invited onto the project by the Principal Investigators (PI); anyone is welcome to be a reviewer. • BKCASE will pay for authors to attend workshops to the extent possible, analogous to GSwE2009 (US carriers only!). First workshop took place December 8-9 at Naval Postgraduate School. Second Workshop took place 30-31 March at ERAU. • BKCASE will generally not pay for the labor of authors or reviewers.

18. BKCASE Products • BKCASE will iteratively deliver a SE BoK and a reference curriculum for a master’s degree in SE together with supplementary material (i.e., case studies) to facilitate their dissemination and adoption. • Products freely available without charge provided credit is given. • Ideally, any other SE BoK or curriculum effort would merge with BKCASE and efforts to create or evolve SE competency models and certification programs would closely coordinate with BKCASE. • Nominal schedule is: • SE BoK: Version 0.25 June 2010, Version 0.5 June 2011, Version 1.0 June 2012 • Reference Curriculum: Version 0.25 September 2010, Version 0.5 September 2011, Version 1.0 September 2012

19. Strategy Publish incrementally/iteratively with GRCSE trailing SEBoK Create common vocabulary to facilitate communications among the team Throughout the project, involve professional societies to facilitate quality, acceptance, and their eventual role as stewards Build early consensus and maintain it throughout the lifetime of the project Rely on and include academia, industry, and government from multiple fields for authors and reviewers Extensively leverage volunteer labor for both authoring and review Rely on existing source material wherever possible and involve principals from efforts that created source material wherever possible Leverage the processes used to create GSwE2009 and the NPS Modeling and Simulation Acquisition Curriculum Keep completely open and collaborative at a global level – but authors make content decisions Hold physical workshops every 3 months to synchronize teams and build team relationships – rely on virtual meetings, email, and other collaboration technology at other times Keep the team focused on the value propositions when conflicts arise. 19

20. Primary Technical Decisions 1-2 • The SEBoK organizes domain independent SE knowledge. It provides a structure for that knowledge, defines important terms, summarizes important topics, selectively helps users choose among popular alternative methods, facilitates search, printing, and application by its intended users, and identifies references which elaborate more fully on all topics. For Version 0.25, the SEBoK will include a set of primary references based on the expert opinion of the SEBoK authors. For subsequent versions, secondary references may be added. • The BKCASE Project will develop recommendations on how INCOSE and the IEEE will maintain and evolve SEBoK in accordance with the BKCASE charter, assuming those organizations become stewards of SEBoK after Version 1.0 is released. Version 1.0 of SEBoK itself will include features to facilitate its maintenance and evolution, including the ability for SEBoK users to readily propose new references and evaluate existing references, as well as readily propose changes to all other aspects of the SEBoK. 20

21. Primary Technical Decisions 3-4 • Primary direct SEBoK users will be (a) practicing systems engineers ranging from novices up through senior experts, (b) those responsible for defining and implementing SE processes within organizations, projects, and programs; (c) those responsible for certifying systems engineers and developing certification programs; (d) customers of SE organizations to help them better select and evaluate those organizations; (e) any project manager, engineer, technologist, researcher, or scientist who needs to know about SE; (f) those who educate and train systems engineers; and (g) the GRCSE author team. The SEBoK will facilitate easy access and use by these different types of users. • Secondary SEBoK users will be human resource professionals and other workforce development professionals, senior non-technical managers, and lawyers who will use the SEBoK with the support of systems engineers. The SEBoK will facilitate easy access and use by these users. 21

22. Primary Technical Decisions 5-6 • The ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 process structure was the initial architecture for the SEBoK. The authors divided into several teams. Each team was assigned non-overlapping subsets of 15288 processes. Each team independently developed initial SEBoK content for their process subset, including methods, techniques, and primary references, taking into account primary and secondary SEBoK users. At Workshop 2, the results of the individual team efforts were jointly evaluated by the entire author team leading to a revised architecture. • Version 0.25 of the SEBoK will be domain independent. Domain dependent knowledge will be captured through case studies of individual systems within specific domains. Those case studies will be companion documents to Version 0.25. After Version 0.25 is complete, the decision to use case studies as the only means to capture domain specific knowledge will be revisited. 22

23. Table of Contents as of April 2010 Perspective has expanded from original structure based on ISO/IEC 15288

24. Representation of Evolved INCOSE Graduate Reference Curriculum

25. Tentative Line-up for GRCSE • Tim Ferris (lead) • Alice Squires* • J.J. Ekstrom • Mary van Leer • Dave Olwell • Tom Hilburn* • Massood Towhidnejad* • Guilherme Travassos* • Rick Adcock* • Eric Bonjour * means participated in GSwE2009

26. State of BKCASE • Significant funding support from US Department of Defense • INCOSE, IEEE Systems Council, IEEE Computer Society Educational Activities Board, ACM, and the NDIA Systems Engineering Division are all participants • Seeking participation from Brazilian Computer Society • Seeking authors from medical, power, and transportation industries. • Explicitly seek INCOSE and the IEEE to become sponsors and assume maintenance and revision responsibilities after Version 1.0 is published • First two workshops complete; initial teams formed to create Version 0.25, due out this summer; next 4 workshops scheduled; special events at INCOSE IW and EuSEC scheduled; presentation scheduled at SSTC

27. Questions? • Is this group willing to help? www.BKCASE.org bkcase@stevens.edu