SE Overview Flashcards
What’s difference between operator and user?
Operator is an individual who, or an organization that, contributes to the functionality of a system and draws on knowledge, skills and procedures to contribute the function. The user is individual who or group that benefits from a system during its utilization.
What’s diff. between activity and process?
Activity is a set of cohesive tasks of a process. So basically one part of a process.
What’s a domain asset?
Is the output of a subprocess of domain engineering that is reused for producing two or more products in a product line.
What is domain scoping?
Identifies and bounds the functional domains that are important to an envisioned product line and provide sufficient reuse potential to justify the product line creation. NOTE: Product line scoping is about the specific products!
What is the general system concept of functionality?
Expressed in terms of the interactions of the system with its operating environment, especially the users. Derived from interactions that are influenced by the organization (interrelations) of the system elements.
When a system is considered as an integrated combination of interacting elements, the functionality of the system derives not just from the interactions of individual elements with the environmental elements but also from how these interactions are influenced by the organization (interrelations) of the system elements.
What is the diff. between attribute and variable?
Attribute is an observable characteristic or property of the system (or system element). Represented symbolically by variables.
What does a system need to be to qualify as an SOS?
- Operational independence of constituent systems
- Managerial independence of constituent systems
- Geographically distributed
- Emergent behavior
- Evolutionary development processes used
What’s the diff. between complicated and complex?
Complicated→whole is sum of parts. Complex→Whole is not mere sum of parts. That’s the gist of it. There are implications, however.
How does the reductionist approach differ from systems science?
Reductionist approach is very successful in using the methods of separating and isolating in search of simplicity while systems science relies on connecting and contextualizing to identify patterns of organized complexity.
How does classical science differ from systems science?
Classical Science
- An entity can be resolved into and reconstituted from its parts, either materially or conceptually
- Limitations to analytical procedures
- Ignores emergence
Systems Science
- Scientific approach to the problems of organization and complexity
- Open system theory (Bertalanffy, 1950)
- Attempts to compensate for the inherent limitations of classical science, notably its neglect of emergence
Stuff a system has you might forget
- A system has system‐level properties (“emergent properties”) that are properties of the whole system not attributable to individual parts.
- It has life cycle, function, structure, behavior, and performance characteristics
- Multiple feedback loops with variable time constants, so that cause-and-effect relationships may not be immediately obvious or easy to determine.
- A system exists within a wider “context” or environment.
- A system is made up of parts that interact with each other and the wider context.
- A system both changes and adapts to its environment when it is deployed (inserted into its environment).
Characteristics a system MAY have you might forget
- A system may exist independent of human intentionality.
- A system may be part of one or several wider “containing systems.”
- A system may be self‐sustaining, self‐organizing, and dynamically evolving (such systems include “complex adaptive systems”).
- A system may offer “affordances”—features that provide the potential for interaction by “affording the ability to do something” (Norman, 1990): • Affordances will lead to interactions whether planned or not. For example, the affordance of a runway to let planes land and take off also leads to a possibly unintended affordance to drive vehicles across it, which may get in the way of planes, leading to undesirable emergent whole‐ system behavior.
- A system may be: • Clearly bounded and distinct from its context (the solar system, Earth, planes, trains, automobiles, ships, people) • Closely coupled with or embedded in its context (a bridge, a town, a runway, the human cardiovascular system, the Internet) • Of fluid and dynamic makeup (a club, team, social group, ecosystem, flock of geese, and again the Internet)
- A system may be technical (requiring one or multiple disciplines to design), social, ecological, environmental, or a compound of any or all of these.
What happens in Development stage?
- Define/refine system requirements
- Create solution description—architecture and design
- Implement initial system
- Integrate, verify, and validate system
What happens in Concept stage?
Concept stage is about the actions/activities that occur starting with understanding the problem space and concluding with selecting a solution concept from a menu of viable solution concepts. Note that some of this work may include developing life cycle concepts such as the OpsCon.
What challenges arise with SOSs?
- Leadership
- Authorities
- Capabilties/Requirements
- Constituent systems’ perspective
- Testing, validation, and learning
- Autonomy, interdependencies, and emergence
- SOS principles (they are immature)
