systems.camp North 2017: Results

Social Networks & Systems Engineering

In this session, I wanted to hear from the participants whether they have already used social networks in the context of system development, and whether the experience was good or bad. This question was driven by my experience with gitHub and JIRA in the past, and my current work with Jama.

The participants fell into two groups: Those who had never used social networks in a work context (and were very skeptical); and those who had and recognized the value.

The "aha" moment came when participants realized that communication is not an end in itself but is directly integrated into the workflow. This has two primary effects: (1) Information appears where it is needed. For example, gitHub makes it possible for the text of a commit to be automatically added to the associated bug as a comment. (2) The communication triggers activities. To pick up on the example from earlier, a commit can, with the right text, also modify the status of the bug, e.g. from "Open" to "Resolved".

Below are the identified use cases:

Introduction of agile working methods in hardware-oriented teams

The topic of hardware and agile came up several times, and I took part in one of the sessions. The participants quickly agreed that technology has long supported agile hardware development, but that existing organizations are struggling with it.

Agile hardware development: electrical and mechanical

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this session, which was similar in content to the previous one.

System validation & verification: What is useful in which phase?

I did not take part in this session by Matthias Schröder.

MBSE & CAD/PLM interface

Things often go wrong at the interfaces - whether between the systems or between the tools.

Dealing with cross-sectional requirements

Divide and conquer: Although systems can usually be broken down quite well hierarchically, this often leaves a few cross-cutting requirements that run through the entire system. That's what this session was about.

Can the life cycle of components be modeled in a meaningful way?

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this session by Johannes Kreuzer.

Systems Engineering and Internet of Things (IoT)

Even if it is a buzzword, the IoT has already arrived. How do we deal with the new challenges?

How relevant is Systems Science for Systems Engineering?

This exciting session went almost in the direction of philosophy. Axel showed a set of slides from David Rousseauwhich was the subject of lively discussion. The slides themselves are not available, but on There is a video on YouTubewhere he presents an older version of the slides. Axel also recommends this paper.

Mention was also made of the book A Primer for Model-Based Systems Engineering by David Long.

Are conjugated SysML interfaces useful?

This very specialized session by Axel Scheithauer dealt with the concept of conjugated interfaces, in other words "inverted interfaces". This concept already exists in SysML for ports. But in order to apply it in practice, a conjugate copy of the interface must be created and maintained. This is rather unattractive when you consider that the conjugation of the interface can also be derived.

The role of functional and logical architecture in MBSE platform construction

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this presentation by Martin Fernholz, even though I have often encountered the topic in practice. Here, too, it was primarily about SysML.