INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2020: Where have we arrived?
13 years ago, in September 2007, INCOSE published the "INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2020". There is little talk about this vision, as INCOSE has since published Vision 2025. But now that it is 2020, this is a good opportunity to examine the extent to which the vision has been fulfilled.
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As a reminder, in 2007 the iPhone was launched on the market. The concept of a smartphone was completely unknown at the time. In the same year, gitHub started operations and thus gave Open Source an enormous boost. Looking back, the world was already undergoing an enormous transformation in 2007, which has since accelerated.
Why a vision?
The authors of INCOSE Vision 2020 (PDF) were under no illusion that they could dictate the direction of change. The aim was rather to recognize the trends relevant to systems engineering and to reinforce and accelerate positive trends (and slow down negative ones). Simply naming the important trends helps decision-makers to move in the same direction even without consultation:
[The INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2020] has been written particularly to support the collaboration of the visionary leaders and pioneers in industry, academia, and government"
Introduction of the INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2020
In the first part, the authors examine the state of development, as well as the drivers and brakes. The actual vision concerns five areas, which I will present in a moment. The vision concludes with an analysis of the implications of the trends and how decision-makers can promote the positive aspects for systems engineering.
1. global systems engineering environment
INCOSE assumed that systems engineering would be the foundation for the global distributed development of complex systems. This includes, among other things, the existence of a global, standardized standard for systems engineering.
INCOSE has made a significant contribution to this goal, for example by driving forward standards such as ISO 15288 and the corresponding training and Certifications.
2. systems and their nature
This topic is about the increasing interconnection of systems on a technical, geographical and many other levels. This makes the architecture more important, as it must guarantee the robustness of the systems. As early as 2007, the authors predicted that dealing with system intelligence would be a challenge.
The authors were also right on this topic: an exciting aspect in today's world is the question of who owns and/or controls the architecture. In some areas open standards enormously successful. In other areas, corporations dominate the architectures, which can lead to conflicts of interest.
3. systems engineering processes
Without really saying it, the authors suggest that processes are becoming much more agile. I can also confirm this, the interest in AgilityThe demand for new products, not only in systems engineering, is not abating.
In my opinion, this is an area where many organizations still have a lot of catching up to do. Conversely, this also means that teams that have truly embraced agility have a huge competitive advantage. Good examples of this are SpaceX and Wikispeed (Automotive).
4. model-based systems engineering
With MBSE is something I deal with a lot in this blog. In this respect, the INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2020 was spot on: MBSE is a powerful enabler that helps to master the complexity of modern systems.
Unfortunately, there are still enormous deficits in MBSE: In particular, MBSE is still far from being established across the board and is often only applied in small sub-areas. There is still a lot to do here.
5. systems engineering education
As already mentioned under point 1, INCOSE is establishing itself intensively in the area of further training. The authors have correctly recognized that uniform training is the foundation for successful systems engineering.
On a positive note, the topic has also long since arrived outside INCOSE: many institutes now offer opportunities for Further training often in collaboration with industry. In Germany OOSE is committed to strong in this area. However, the profession of systems engineer is still not very well known. There is still a lot to do here.
Vision 2025
As I said at the beginning, the INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2020 is long outdated. While the Vision 2020 is reminiscent of a plain Word document, the Vision 2025 professionally produced with lots of graphics and in color, and you can feel the urge to hold the PDF in your hand as a glossy brochure. This may sound superficial, but such an appearance is important to reach the target group: Leaders who don't even want to understand systems engineering in detail, but want to reap the benefits for their organizations.
Image source: INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2020
