Creating Flexible Architectures for Systems Engineering

摘要

Systems Engineers have been modeling systems since the inception of therndiscipline. Reasons for modeling systems include among others: definition of the work to berndone (requirements), allocation of responsibilities, documentation of the completed system, andrncommunication with the various disciplines who will create, operate, and maintain the system.rnUML (the Unified Modeling Language) has recently been used by Systems Engineers to modelrnsystems. Many papers and articles have been written on various aspects of systems modelingrnwith UML, most especially Use Cases, but little attention has been paid to system partitioning.rnPapers that address system partitioning do so with a “one size fits all” philosophy, by mandatingrna prescriptive structure that does not address the true needs of a particular system’s development.rnUnfortunately, a badly partitioned system can be a serious handicap to the development of arnsystem. The drivers for system partitioning include: process, product, team makeup, areas ofrninterest, standards, physical boundaries of the system, legacy and COTS components, couplingrnand cohesion. A proper approach can also help in the establishment of a component basedrndevelopment approach, leading to reuse of requirements, design, test, and implementationrnartifacts. This paper will discuss these issues and illustrate their use by four case studies drawnrnfrom experience in consultation. Finally, it will give advice on lessons learned.