CloudSat System Engineering: Techniques That Point to a Future Success

摘要

Numerous books, articles, and technicalrnpapers have been written on system engineering's rolernin successful project management. Components of thernproject development life cycle such as the definitionrnand analysis of requirements, the design process,rnconfiguration control, and risk management arernfrequently identified as key ingredients to thernsuccessful outcome of any endeavor. This is true forrndeployment of a product or system and also for rolloutrnof an important service. Most of the literature focusesrnon what the major system engineering steps are withoutrnnecessarily addressing how to complete each step orrnhow to successfully transition between them. Over thernpast three years the CloudSat Project, a NASA EarthrnSystem Science Pathfinder mission to provide fromrnspace the first global survey of cloud profiles and cloudrnphysical properties, has implemented a successfulrnproject system engineering approach. Techniquesrnlearned through heuristic reasoning of past projectrnevents and professional experience were applied alongrnwith select methods recently touted to increaserneffectiveness without compromising efficiency. Thernuse of an online database as the single repository forrnofficially identified requirements and completing arnstreamlined system-level fault tree analysis andrnaccompanying probabilistic risk assessment are somernspecific examples. The collective set has allowed thernCloudSat Project to be successful through formulation,rnapproval, and at least early implementation phase.