The Agile Manifesto, design thinking and systems engineering

摘要

New and non-traditional movements in the engineering fields potentially have a positive impact on classical systems engineering models in terms of promoting innovation. These movements include off shoots of the Agile Manifesto such as Agile Software Engineering, Agile Software Systems Engineering and Agile Project Management, the rise and popularity of Design Thinking as practiced by IDEO and others and the success in new software programs of redefining basic engineering principles such as the Zen of Python. This paper discusses two of these movements and assesses the potential of incorporating them in generic system engineering steps. The viability and strength of systems engineering models (Classic V, Waterfall, Spiral and others) has been proven by their sheer longevity and the wealth of successful outcomes. However, today's external environment including what has been termed the technology explosion has dramatically truncated time to market requiring consideration of increasing agility in our process steps. It is agility that is the common thread in these new movements.