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The Operations Concept: Developing and Using an OpsCon

  • An Operations Concept is more detailed than a Concept of Operations
  • It is a systems engineering artifact that describes how system use cases are realized
  • It is versatile and serves many uses across the project
  • There is no set format, though there are some best practices to consider

Concept of Operations (ConOps)

Let start by talking about the OpsCon’s better-known big brother, the ConOps.

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Agile SE Part Zero: Overview

“Agile” is the latest buzzword in systems engineering. It has a fair share of both adherents and detractors, not to mention a long list of companies offering to sell tools, training, and coaching. What has been lacking is a thoughtful discussion about when agile provides value, when it doesn’t, and how to adapt agile practices to be effective in complex systems engineering projects.

I don’t claim this to be the end-all guide on agile systems engineering, but hope it will at least spark some discussion. Please comment on the articles with details from your own experiences. If you’re interested in contributing or collaborating, please contact me at benjamin@engineeringforhumans.com, I’d love to add your voice to the site.

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Learn from the mistakes of others

The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience… i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business…

General James Mattis

The most successful people in any profession learn from the experiences of others. You can learn from their successes, sure. But don’t focus on doing things exactly they way they did, you’ll stifle your own innovation. Instead, understand their successes, extract relevant lessons, and forge your own path.

More importantly, learn from others’ failures and mistakes.

That’s why I publish a Reading / Listening List. As of the publishing of this article, 5 of the 6 recommendations are about poor engineering and design1. I find these stories fascinating, enlightening, and valuable. By avoiding the pitfalls of the past, we improve the likelihood of success in our own projects.

It’s okay to make mistakes, but strive to at least make original mistakes.

Board man gets paid

For years I’ve been advocating for the effective inclusion of human systems integration (HSI) in the systems engineering (SE) process. I had to address a persistent misunderstanding of what HSI is and how it relates to human factors; while that can be frustrating, I recognized that it wasn’t going to change overnight. Instead, I worked diligently to share my message with anyone who would listen.

Recently, my diligence paid off. I was contacted by a group putting together a proposal for a defense contract. The government’s request outlined their expectations for HSI as part of the systems engineering effort in a way that the proposal team hadn’t seen before. Someone on the team had heard me speak before, knew I had the right expertise they needed, and reached out to request my support.

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Diversity in engineering careers

I had the privilege to attend the Society of Women Engineers conference WE19 in Anaheim, CA last week. I left inspired and optimistic.

Speakers and panelists relayed their experiences over the previous decades. These women had been denied entrance into engineering schools, marginalized in the workplace, and forced to become ‘one of the guys’ to be accepted among their peers.

We’ve come a long way. It’s never been a better time to enter the workforce as a woman/person of color/LGBTQ/etc. Diversity in the workforce and leadership of engineering companies is on the rise, barriers are falling, and the value of diversity is being recognized. And yet, we still have so far to go.

We recognize that diversity is good for business 1 and companies are actively recruiting more diverse talent. Our organizational cultures are still adapting to this diversity. In many ways, we still expect all employees to conform to the existing culture, rather than proactively shape the inclusive culture we desire.

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The Swiss cheese model: Designing to reduce catastrophic losses

Failures and errors happen frequently. A part breaks, an instruction is misunderstood, a rodent chews through a power cord. The issue gets noticed, we respond to correct it, we clean up any impacts, and we’re back in business.

Occasionally, a catastrophic loss occurs. A plane crashes, a patient dies during an operation, an attacker installs ransomware on the network. We often look for a single cause or freak occurrence to explain the incident. Rarely, if ever, are these accurate.

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Thoughts on “A Message to Garcia”

“A Message to Garcia” is a brief essay on the value of initiative and hard work written by Elbert Hubbard in 1898. It is often assigned in leadership courses, particularly in the military. Less often assigned but providing essential context is Col. Andrew Rowan’s first-person account of the mission, “How I Carried the Message to Garcia”.

There are also a number of opinion pieces archived in newspapers and posted on the internet both heralding and decrying the essay. There are a number of interpretations and potential lessons to be extracted from this story. It’s important that developing leaders find the valuable ideas.

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It’s time to get rid of specialty engineering: A criticism of the INCOSE Handbook

Chapter 10 of the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook covers “Specialty Engineering”. Take a look at the table of contents below. It’s a hodge-podge of roles and skillsets with varying scope.

Table of contents for the Specialty Engineering section of the INCOSE handbook.
Table of contents for the Specialty Engineering section of the INCOSE handbook.

There doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason to this list of items. Training Needs Analysis is a perfect example. There’s no doubt that it’s important, but it’s one rather specific task and not a field unto itself. If you’re going to include this activity, why not its siblings Manpower Analysis and Personnel Analysis?

On the other hand, some of the items in this chapter are supposedly “integral” to the engineering process. This is belied by the fact that they’re shunted into this separate chapter at the end of the handbook. In practice, too, they’re often organized into a separate specialty engineering group within a project.

This isn’t very effective.

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The Boeing 737 Max crashes represent a failure of systems engineering

The 737 is an excellent airplane with a long history of safe, efficient service. Boeing’s cockpit philosophy of direct pilot control and positive mechanical feedback represents excellent human factors1. In the latest generation, the 737 Max, Boeing added a new component to the flight control system which deviated from this philosophy, resulting in two fatal crashes. This is a case study in the failure of human factors engineering and systems engineering.

The 737 Max and MCAS

You’ve certainly heard of the 737 Max, the fatal crashes in October 2018 and March 2019, and the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) which has been cited as the culprit. Even if you’re already familiar, I highly recommend these two thorough and fascinating articles:

  • Darryl Campbell at The Verge traces the market pressures and regulatory environment which led to the design of the Max, describes the cockpit activities leading up to each crash, and analyzes the information Boeing provided to pilots.
  • Gregory Travis at IEEE Spectrum provides a thorough analysis of the technical design failures from the perspective of a software engineer along with an appropriately glib analysis of the business and regulatory environment.

Typically I’d caution against armchair analysis of an aviation incident until the final crash investigation report is in. However, given the availability of information on the design of the 737 Max, I think the engineering failures are clear even as the crash investigations continue.

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