Agile Systems Engineering: Six INCOSE Resources and Their Costs
It is not yet entirely clear how Agile Systems Engineering can actually work. How does agility work when lead times are long? And how much of it can a regulated development process accommodate? An international standard addressing these questions has been in place since February 2026. It’s high time to raise awareness of it—and of other resources as well.
One INCOSE Working Group It has been working on this topic since 2012 and has over 3,000 members. Its results are scattered across a product store, a members-only resource library, a wiki, and a repository at a Norwegian university. Unless you search specifically for them, you won’t find any of them.
In preparation for our next workshop of the GfSE’s Agile SE Group, I have compiled all the relevant information. My basis was the 41-page status deck from the Midyear General Meeting in July 2026, which had 46 participants, along with the accompanying presentations. Six resources are so relevant that I’d like to share them here. Below, for each one, you’ll find what it contains, how far along it is, and how much it costs to access it.
The German Working Group
I'm in the GfSE AgileSE Working Group active. Under the theme „Better Agility with Systems Engineering,“ the event will focus on principles and practices at the intersection of agility and systems engineering, including SEBRAS, Model as Code, and the question of how Agile SE is put into practice. An overview is available at the GfSE Working Groups.
From the last in-person workshop, I have in Agile Systems Engineering Workshop: Fast SEBRAS reports.
The next online workshop will take place on October 16, 2026, and will last three hours. One item on the agenda is systematic alignment with the international INCOSE group. GfSE members are eligible to participate. Anyone who wishes to attend must join the AgileSE working group in advance.
A Primer on Systems Engineering Agility
If you're going to read just one thing, read the primer. In four pages, it answers two questions: What defines agile systems engineering, and why are these characteristics necessary?
At its core are eight so-called strategic aspects: Adaptable Modular Architectures, Iterative Incremental Development, Attentive Situational Awareness, Attentive Decision Making, Common-Mission Teaming, Shared-Knowledge Management, Continual Integration and Test, and Being Agile as an Operational Concept.
The primer thus establishes a common vocabulary without turning it into yet another process framework. I give it a lot of credit for that. In the INCOSE Store Members can download the PDF for free; for everyone else, it currently costs $10.
Systems Engineering Agility Guide
The Primer explains what the eight aspects mean and why they are necessary. The planned Agility Guide is intended to turn that into a "how-to" guide.
A draft presented in 2024 called for 50 to 60 pages, including not only the eight aspects but also "Design and Employment Considerations" and "Case Stories." The target date of mid-2025 passed. As of 2026, the guide remains in development.
This is an opportunity for our German working group. As long as the guide is still being developed, we can contribute our experiences and examples instead of having to write a separate German document later on. Rick Dove’s webinar gives an idea of the planned content „Agile SE Strategies, Purpose, & Value“, which, along with the supporting documentation, is available to INCOSE members.
ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-10
Since February 2026, there has been an international standard specifically for systems engineering agility. It incorporates the eight strategic aspects outlined in the primer and goes a step further by describing guidelines for their selection and application. This allows for formal reference to the group’s work even outside the community.
The Standard plan is not free. According to ISO It costs 135 CHF as a PDF, ePub, or paperback; the preview is available for free. If you have access to the standards through your employer or university, you should check there first.
FuSE Agility Roadmap
The Agile SE Group is closely aligned with INCOSE's "Future of Systems Engineering," or FuSE for short. The starting point is a call from the Systems Engineering Vision 2035, which is available free of charge. Systems engineering must be able to respond to increasingly dynamic and uncertain environments.
The paper „Agility in the Future of Systems Engineering: A Roadmap of Foundational Concepts,“ published in 2021, goes into greater detail. It goes well beyond agile software development and addresses technical oversight in agile projects, stakeholder engagement, agility across organizational boundaries, long lead times, and continuous integration.
This addresses the key issue in complex product development. An electronic component with a 30-week lead time won't just disappear because a team has introduced two-week sprints. On the platform, which is accessible only to INCOSE members, Roadmap Page The Resource Library contains a 42-page slide deck from 2020.
Agile SE Decision Guidance Method
A more practical question is: Where do we actually need more agility?
To this end, the group is developing the Agile SE Decision Guidance Method, an assessment that teams can use to identify the areas where they need to be more agile and responsive.
A CubeSat project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has already applied this method. The study examined the Customer Problem Space, Solution Space, and Product Development Space. Stakeholder Management, Knowledge Management, and Support Environment emerged as the weakest areas. The NTNU Case Study is freely available to INCOSE members.
As of July 2026, the project is well underway. The assessment tool and two application examples are complete, along with two project stories. Work is still in progress on the usage guide and the videos. INCOSE continues to list the method under “Technical Products in Development,” and its publication is scheduled for this year (2026).
Industry Case Studies
The working group has published five case studies on effective Agile software engineering processes. I draw the most from this part of the collection (and will also examine to what extent they are suitable for Product Velocity Case Studies (suitable).
With the SSC Pacific Unmanned Systems Group It focused on team culture, ongoing knowledge management, and the further development of the process as it was being implemented. Unfortunately, the case study is also only available to members.
At Rockwell Collins, approximately 350 people worked on a product line consisting of hardware, firmware, and software. The case study describes synchronized development cycles, reuse across the product line, and an infrastructure for agile hardware development. A publicly available version is on ResearchGate.
In addition, there are projects related to Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. The Lockheed Case Study documents an Agile SE transformation involving approximately 1,200 participants in the Integrated Fighter Group.
We are now looking for additional case studies that demonstrate how the eight strategic aspects are applied and what the results are. So far, there are no examples from the German industrial sector.
Additional Sources
A good place to start—at no cost—is the SEBoK article Agile Systems Engineering. It describes the eight aspects in greater detail than the primer, cites additional sources, and, in its current version, already refers to ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-10.
In addition, an extensive body of knowledge has emerged over the years. Six thematic issues of the INCOSE magazine INSIGHT, 14 webinars between 2012 and 2025, contributions to the Systems Engineering Handbooks V4 and V5, as well as numerous conference papers. Most of this material is available in the Resource Library and on the Working Group Page, a large portion of which is available only to members. Some of these works have since made their way into the GfSE Source Collection Done.
The idea of a Wikipedia page on systems engineering agility has been floated, but that's all. There really is no neutral, publicly accessible introductory page on the topic.
Open Construction Sites
Three topics are currently in the early stages and could also be of interest to the German GfSE Group:
AI is responsible for systems engineering agility Robin Yeman in the Working Group. Since the Midyear Meeting, an article on this topic has been published: „Agile Systems Engineering in the Age of AI: Architecting for Dynamic and Uncertain Environments,“ in the August 2026 issue of INSIGHT.
The other two topics are more open-ended. How can SE Agility actually be put into practice? And what barriers to transformation and pain points stand in the way? For both of these, there is currently no INCOSE product and no defined project plan.
Conclusion
As is so often the case, a little research can bring a wealth of practical material to light—we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The Primer, Standard, SEBoK, Roadmap, and case studies provide a common foundation, yet our discussion all too often starts from scratch again.
The question, of course, is: Which of these approaches work in German development organizations? What are the limitations? And what lessons can be applied to international work?
That is my goal for the workshop on October 16. Not to see what INCOSE is doing, but to decide where we will consciously align ourselves.
