2.4.2 SYSTEMS ARCHITECTING DURING THE CLIENT INTERACTION CYCLE

Abstract

AbstractIn the traditional view of the System Development Life‐Cycle (SDLC), Systems Engineering activities tend to occur toward the front end. Systems Engineering activities are initiated during proposal development, build during requirements analysis and definition, plateau as the system level design is defined, and are, more or less, considered to be completed when the resulting system design is documented, coordinated with, and accepted by the client.The domain of Systems Engineering is being redefined based on the “lust to dust” paradigm. It is my contention that Systems Engineering should be extended even further to include all periods of technical interaction with the client. This includes that time when the only thing that exist is an opportunity or a problem that might be able to be resolved by a the application of Systems Engineering. I further contend that Systems Engineering must be viewed as a “total system” for interacting with its environment while conceiving, designing, developing, producing, delivering, maintaining, and disposing of systems based on operational imperatives and technical, schedule and cost constraints. Systems Architecting activities are, therefore, a proper subset of Systems Engineering activities and this paper will address Systems Architecting during what I have termed the “Client Interaction Cycle” (Figure 1‐03) within the context of the “total system” of Systems Engineering.