INCOSE WMA Newsletter March 2010

I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E

1 Presidents Word

1 Upcoming Events

2 Bringing along the NextGen INCOSE SE

3 INCOSE TechOps

4 Welcome to the new INCOSE Ambassador

4 Call for Presentations and Tutorials

Presidents Word

At the last monthly WMA Chapter meeting, we

began a series of experiments in response to the

survey we took last year. In the survey, we found

out that most members did not participate in more

than a few meeting a year. Therefore, we have

begun trying different venues, topics, themes, etc.

to help increase membership attendance. In the

March meeting we had our first attempt to hold

the session at a restaurant in the Tyson Corners

area (one of the two areas of greatest

concentration – the others being

Reston/Herdon/Chantilly). The “Brio” trial gained

high marks for the food and social networking

opportunities. However, the restaurant had made

a mistake and double-booked their banquet room

by accident – something we didn’t find out about

until the day before. As such, the speaker, Jim

Armstrong, did his best, but you had to be close to

him to hear. I hope Jim’s throat has recovered by

now. We have resolved the problem for April’s

meeting by having the session in the banquet room

and using a portable speaker system to improve

the sound quality. Hopefully that will give us a

better data point on the use of non-corporate

facilities. Please come and try this out. In addition,

we are trying something different with the

upcoming tutorial. We are holding it on a weekday

and making it shorter.

Lunch at Brio is included in the price. We hope

Upcoming Events

April April 13th: Monthly Meeting @ Brio Join Dr. Paul Montgomery for a presentation on “Why Great Architectures Fail and Adequate Architectures Succeed” 6:00 p.m.– 8:00 p.m. @ the Brio Tuscan Grille Banquet Room, 7854L Tysons Corner Center McLean, VA.

April 21st: Weekday Tutorial @ Brio

Join Dr. Steven H. Dam for a tutorial on “Building

Your Concept of Operations (CONOPS)”

11:30 a.m.– 4:30 p.m. @ the Brio Tuscan Grille Banquet Room, 7854L Tysons Corner Center McLean, VA.

continued on page 2

2

people can take time out of their busy schedule

and join us for a topic of current interest – Building

Concepts of Operations (CONOPS). Please feel free

to invite friends and customers to attend. At the

end of every meeting and tutorial, we are asking

for feedback. We are compiling that feedback and

presenting it at the board of directors meeting to

see where to go next in this quest to improve

attendance at the sessions. Please continue to

participate in the surveys and sessions. We’re

looking forward to making WMA not only the

largest INCOSE chapter, but also the best.

Sincerely,

Steven H. Dam

INCOSE WMA President

Bringing along the NextGen INCOSE Systems Engineers Author: L. Nasta, INCOSE-WMA Director

On 2 March 2010, INCOSE-WMA director Laurie Nasta attended the George Mason University INCOSE Student Chapter meeting to deliver a brief on the INCOSE Systems Engineering Certification Program. Despite mid-terms being scheduled for the next day, a rain-snow mix falling, and short advertising notice, the chapter managed to have a really good turnout of about 20+ students, and their faculty adviser, Ms. Kathryn Laskey (Associate Professor, Systems Engineering and Operations Research [SEOR]).

Ms. Nasta presented the standard INCOSE certification deck, focusing heavily on the Associate Systems Engineering Professional (ASEP) certification as being the most appropriate for the graduating Undergraduate or Masters student candidate. She advised them how to best position

themselves for taking the CSEP five years later, noting how important it was to get a mix of experience in multiple SE domain areas not just lock themselves into one special area. She noted the importance of:

staying in touch with leaders who could be qualified references for their CSEP applications;

that experienced professionals within her own firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, had noted the difficulty involved in going back to track down managers from former jobs;

and that if they had known how important keeping in touch was for supporting the CSEP application process they would have done better

She spent time discussing the different domains with Systems Engineering that INCOSE tests on. This was an interesting discussion because both sides learned that the GMU curriculum probably is deficient in some areas, like Quality Assurance, and Logistics and other Speciality Engineering domains like System Safety. She also covered the newest certification - the CSEP-Acquisition - which is still growing for those in the group who might be interested in the DOD environment or being Acquisition Engineers or Program Managers. This was a very new topic for most of the crowd who were mostly unfamiliar with the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) and the DAWIA certification for government managers. She encouraged all the attendees to be active in the WMA chapter as a stepping stone for future employment, and to remain involved to support acquisition of Professional Development Units (PDUs) needed to sustain any SE certification.

3

INCOSE Technical Operations (TechOps)

Author: Kenneth M. Zemrowski, INCOSE Assistant Director for Standards

People who join professional associations are attracted for several reasons, including chapter activities, publications, symposia, and special interest groups. In the case of INCOSE, the last three areas are supported directly by Technical Operations, which provides technical information by means of technical events, technical products, technical interactions among stakeholders, and technical information repositories.

Many of INCOSE’s 37 working groups met in February 2010 in Mesa, Arizona, at the INCOSE International Workshop. These WGs, which are generally domain specific (e.g., Industry, academia, government) are chartered to develop specific INCOSE products and help advance systems engineering knowledge. The WGs are organized into eight areas, with an assistant director for each:

Knowledge o Architecture o Complex Systems o Intelligent Enterprises o Knowledge Management o Process Improvement o Research o Resilient Systems

Processes o Cost Engineering o Human Systems Integration o In-Service Systems o Lean Systems Engineering o Life Cycle Management o Measurement o Requirements o Risk Management o System Safety Integration o Systems Security Engineering o Verification & Validation

Technology o Autonomous System Test & Validation o Model-driven System Design o Tools Database o Tools Integration & Interoperability

Industry o Biomedical o Information Systems o Infrastructure

o Net-centric Operations o Systems Engineering in the Commercial

World o Very Small Small & Medium Enterprises

Academia o Accreditation o Motor Sports o SE Graduate Curriculum

Government o Anti-terrorism International o Defense Systems o Global Earth Observation System of

Systems (GEOSS) o Intelligent Transport & Transit Systems o Power and Energy Systems o Space Systems

One might wonder why Motor Sports is within Academia. The focus is not on the varied systems engineering practices embodied in motor sports, but on the outreach potential for introducing systems engineering to students

by using a popular recreational activity.

Besides the working groups, there are two INCOSE initiatives: Model Based Systems Engineering and Standards. Although INCOSE does not develop its own standards, we have established liaisons with a number of

international standards organizations.

In future articles, I will briefly describe the activities of each set of working groups as well as the two initiative areas. I will also describe the TechOps role in producing INCOSE Insight and organizing events such as the International

Symposium.

Additional information about TechOps, including an organization chart, is available on the INCOSE public web site at: http://www.incose.org/about/organization/ti.aspx. Through INCOSE Connect (https://connect.incose.org/default.aspx), INCOSE members have access to SharePoint® pages for each of the working groups and information on our standards activities.

Ken Zemrowski. For more information on Ken, continue

to page 4.

4

For more information on INCOSE WMA, please visit www.incose-wma.org

Call for Presentations and Tutorials

WMA INCOSE 2010

The Washington Metropolitan Area (WMA) Chapter of the

International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) is

your local source for systems engineering. The chapter has

a mission to provide relevance in a venue where engineers

can share topics of current information and network..

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

Service Oriented Architectures

Architecture Frameworks

Cloud Computing and its impact on systems engineering and modeling

Model-Based Systems Engineering

New tools and methodologies for systems engineering

Etc. Presentation opportunities are available during meetings and at semi-monthly tutorials. At the monthly meetings the chapter seeks short papers (20-40 minutes).. Tutorials can be either ½ day or full day events, with a short (5-15 minute) summary presented at the monthly meeting prior to tutorial. The submitted papers will be evaluated by at least 2 members of the WMA Chapter review team based on the following criteria:

1) Content advances the knowledge-base for, or the practice of, systems engineering (this is the most important criterion, focusing on usability)

2) Content is substantive

3) Content is logical

4) Content assertions are backed by supporting data

5) Content is effectively conveyed and key concepts

are integrated Presented papers will be posted on the INCOSE WMA web site. If you are interested to present at a meeting or can recommend a speaker, please contact the program chair, Karin Harm-Ottman for more information.

Welcome to the new INCOSE Tech Ops Ambassador

Please welcome Ken Zemrowski as the new INCOSE WMA Chapter Ambassador to INCOSE Technical Operations! In his new role, Ken will be helping connect the chapter to what’s going on in INCOSE Tech Ops.

Ken Zemrowski serves as Assistant Director for Standards Initiatives, responsible for coordinating INCOSE's liaison activities with various organizations that produce systems engineering standards. Ken's standards experience includes representing the Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP) on the Executive Board of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS, where he also chaired the INCITS Policy and Procedures Committee; INCITS develops the USA positions on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 - Information Technology – standards). He has also participated in development of aeronautical standards with the International Civil Aviation Organization and RTCA (formerly Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics) and is a member of the IEEE Standards Association.

Ken is employed by TASC, Inc., where he is Chief Engineer for FAA Automation Technical Assistance Contract (TAC2) project, providing technical leadership for support of modernization of the FAA’s national airspace system. He directly supports strategic planning and systems engineering for transformation to a system capable of handling triple the airspace capacity of today by 2025. Ken also serves as a TASC Technical Fellow.

Ken is a CSEP with the Acquisition extension.