Realizing the Value Promise of Digital Engineering: Planning, Implementing, and Evolving the Ecosystem

Abstract

ABSTRACTGaining the benefits of Digital Engineering is not only about implementing digital technologies. The Innovation Ecosystem is a system of systems in its own right, at least partly engineered, subject to the risks and challenges of evolving socio‐technical systems. This article summarizes an aid to analyzing and understanding, planning, implementation, and ongoing improvement of the Innovation Ecosystem or its components. It is based on a generic ecosystem analysis reference model with particular focal viewpoints. It is represented as a configurable model‐based formal pattern and the INCOSE MBSE Patterns Working Group initially applied it in a related INCOSE collaboration project led by the Agile Systems Engineering Working Group. Users of the resulting framework subsequently elaborated and applied aspects in the context of a wide variety of commercial and defense ecosystems across different domains. While connecting to several current and historical contexts, it is particularly revealing of Digital Engineering's special promise. By explicating the recurrent theme of Consistency Management that underlies all historical innovation, it enhances our understanding of historical as well as future engineering and life cycle management. This includes the ecosystem preparation of internal and supply chain human and technical resources to effectively consume and exploit digital information assets, not just create them. The ecosystem model carries its own representation of enhanced capability implementation by generation of agile release train increments, along with evolutionary steering based on feedback and group learning.