Model-based Systems Architecting

Appendix 2Classical Engineering Issues

We shall now present several classical engineering issues on illustrative examples. These issues are indeed representative of the typical problems addressed by systems architecting. We classified them into two categories: on one hand, product problems, referring to purely architectural flaws leading to a bad design of the product, and, on the other hand, project problems, that is, organizational issues leading to a bad functioning of the project. An overview of these different problems is presented in Table A2.1 below. The details of our examples and analyses will be found in the sequel of this appendix.

Table A2.1. Examples of typical product and project issues addressed by systems architecting

Product system problems

Product problem 1 – The product system model does not capture reality Typical issue: the system design is based on a model which does not match with reality Example: the failure of Calcutta subway Product problem 2 – The product system has undesirable emergent properties Typical issue: a complex integrated system has unexpected and/or undesired emerging properties, coming from a local problem that has global consequences Example: the explosion of Ariane 5 satellite launcher during its first flight

Project system problems

Project problem 1 – The project system has integration issues Typical issue: the engineering of a system is not done in a collaborative way Example: the huge delays of the Airbus A380 project