Speaker: Tom Strandberg
Venue: Hamburg (15. April 2013), Copenhagen (16. April 2013), Stockholm (17. April 2013)

To understand where we stand with Systems Engineering (SE) today and establish a vision where we are going, it is necessary to take a look back.

This presentation takes its starting point in that 15 years ago, as the German INCOSE Chapter has just been founded, the thoughts of a Swedish Chapter were initiated. As part of the preparations, a series of seminars were held with international leading SE experts to provide a map of what SE entailed at the time. Since then the systems engineering community has grown significantly and so has the scope of SE.

The main objective of the presentation is to orient the audience in the developments within the Systems Engineering and the reasons behind these. This is done by providing a map of the major thrusts over the last 15 years such as the life cycle approach introduced by ISO/IEC 15288, the model-based SE activities including SysML and tools development, the system architecture notion to support different stakeholders´ views of systems, systems thinking to support definition of complex problems and the integration with lean management. Examples of how these developments have been initiated and are used in different domains are provided.

Reflecting on the developments, an attempt is made to distil some core principles of SE that are little touched by time and trends. Bearing these in mind, the audience is introduced to the some thoughts on the future including the “INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2020” and invited to make their own judgement of the future of SE and how you can shape their SE effort at home.