[08] Question #1: "How will Success Look Like for Your System?"

With this article, we begin the journey of adopting (or implementing) a Systems Engineering (SE) approach for engineering a System of Interest (SoI). We will take you through this journey by stating and responding to a series of questions that you might need to answer along the way. We will keep this journey as generic as possible so that it can be applied to any SoI of your choice. The only assumption we are making is that we are starting from the very beginning (i.e. ‘from scratch’ or ‘from a blank sheet of paper’), right after taking the decision that an ‘Engineered System’ will be required to solve a problem at hand. If this is not the starting point of your SE journey, it only means that some of the initial questions may have already been answered. You may join the journey a little later when you face a question that has not been answered yet!

What is Success?

INCOSE’s definition of Systems Engineering (SE) includes the word “successful”, hinting that the goal of engineering any system, particularly using an SE approach, is to ensure its “success” (Click here for INCOSE’s definition). While some may say this is obvious, an SE approach explicitly recognizes and places emphasis on this at the very beginning. Hence, this is the first order of business in the SE journey: defining what success will look like for the System of Interest (SoI) being engineered.

The question “How Will Success Look Like for Your System?” does not have a one-word answer. The answer will also depend on who you ask. In SE, we use the term “stakeholder” for any individual or organization (or organizational unit) that has some interest in our SoI. Ideally, you could say that a system can be considered to be successful if all the stakeholders are happy and consider it successful. But then, we are just getting started and we don’t have a full list of all stakeholders for our SoI. Many stakeholders may get identified much further in our SE journey. So, what do we do now?

Success Criteria

The SE journey we have just embarked on for our SoI, is a top-down approach that started by first establishing the need for using an SE approach to engineer our SoI. Right now, it is important that we sufficiently identify the list of key (or major or critical) stakeholders who have been involved in taking the decision to go ahead with the engineering of the SoI and those who would be funding this engineering effort going forward. How they define success of the SoI is what we should establish first.

• For a typical consumer product (like a car, home appliance, or a laptop), the company or manufacturer would measure success in terms of sales, market share, and number of happy customers (and some of these may be stated with respect to their competitors). If they don’t foresee commercial success in terms of user satisfaction leading to high sales with quick and significant Return on Investment (ROI), they may not be interested in supporting the development of the SoI.

• For a military system (like a fighter aircraft, missile, or defense communication system), operational effectiveness of the system while it is being used in the field by the defense services is what matters.

At this point in time, while on the first step of the SE journey, these critical success criteria (that come from the major stakeholders) need to be clearly identified and established. In order to do this well, you have to imagine how your yet-to-be realized future SoI will perform in the hands of the end-users, successfully doing what it is supposed to be doing!

From an SE point of view, “success” could also be defined in terms of the process of engineering the SoI - i.e., how much time, cost, effort will be expended. For organizations that may be embarking on an SE journey for the first time, it will be helpful if some baseline values of these for a non-SE approach can be established. This will help establish the value that an SE approach can bring. However, this is easier said than done. But unless this is done, there will be no effective way to convert SE skeptics to SE believers!

Answering Question #1 “How Will Success Look Like for Your System?” will establish the overall vision and success criteria for your SoI, and give you the confidence that if the SE approach can help achieve these criteria, success is guaranteed! Currently, we only have a starting list of stakeholders and what they are looking for. Next, we have to add more entries to that list.

- KS & DH

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