Speaker: Jonas Andersson
Venue: Local Speaker in Stockholm

Successful development of tech-intensive product requires a skillful balance between integration and design. The designer creates products and services that fulfil needs in an operational environment, as we understand them at the time. Usually we describe that product or service as a system consisting of interacting elements. However, in order to make that product or service work in the real world, the integrator must gradually combine the elements created during design to make sure they work together and provide the intended quality.

This presentation gives you a better understanding for the delicate roleplay between design and integration. Hopefully, it inspires you to reflect and to improve your current development process.

During development, systems integration serves many purposes, and except providing the backbone for verification and validation, it e.g. supports system analysis, qualification and transition of the product to its enduser. Indeed, rightly used, systems integration is a valuable sparring partner and aid for good frontloaded design as well as more iterative design approaches such as agile development.

As techniques such as modelling, automated test, simulation, and 3D-prototyping becomes more available and affordable, we can initiate integration much earlier in the development lifecycle in parallel with design. In fact, we can “collapse” the left and the right legs of the old Vee model in the way its initiators intended (but rarely have been used) and make integration and design to parallel processes throughout the development lifecycle. Moreover, as development projects more commonly intends to combine already available elements provided within the framework of technology platforms and enterprise information systems, the development process itself becomes often tend to become more integration centric as we more rarely start development with a white sheet of paper.

In the presentation, we will discuss ways to initiate integration early in the development lifecycle and to select an effective integration strategy based on carefully selected integration elements and aspects. You will also get a first glimpse on how to create architecture views for systems integration and how to plan your project to accommodate integration activities. This presentation targets:

• Engineers who needs a better understanding on integration as a vital component in systems
  development,
• Project managers who needs to understand how integration affects a tech-intensive project,
• Engineering managers who needs to organize the integration work and align integration with all other aspects of systems development, or actually
• Any stakeholder who take part in, or is affected by, integration of complex products or services

Biography
Jonas Andersson has spent more than 20 year as lecturer, researcher, manager, and practitioner within the domains of systems engineering and engineering management. Jonas is heading Decisionware AB – a Swedish based company devoted to industrial continued competence development in product creation and technical leadership. He is also Associate professor at the Norwegian Institute for Systems Engineering in Kongsberg, Norway. Jonas holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Information and Control Systems from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and is a Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP). He is also a former adjunct professor in military-technology at the Swedish National Defence College. Within INCOSE – the International Council on Systems Engineering – Jonas is a founding member and past president of the Swedish INCOSE Chapter. He has also served as Associate Director for Events and Director for Strategy at INCOSE’s board of directors.