Systems Engineering for the Digital Age

Chapter 35Methods for Integrating Dynamic Requirements and Emerging Technologies

William B. Rouse¹ and Dinesh Verma²

¹ McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA

² Stevens Institute of Technology, School of Systems & Enterprises, Hoboken, NJ, USA

Introduction

Much of engineering involves designing solutions to meet the needs of markets, or perhaps military missions or societal sector needs such as water, power, and transportation. These needs are often uncertain, especially if solutions are intended to operate far into the future.

There is also often uncertainty in how best to meet needs. New technologies may be needed and their likely performance and cost may be uncertain. Budgets may be insufficient to achieve what is needed. Competitors or adversaries may be creating competing solutions that are similar or superior.

Organizations would like to have the flexibility and agility to address both uncertain needs and uncertain technologies due to performance challenges, organizational experience, supply chains, etc. This is likely to require ways of thinking and allocating resources that are foreign to many organizations. This chapter outlines and illustrates these ways of thinking.

To illustrate how companies address uncertainties, consider two experiences at General Motors (GM). Both illustrations involved Ford surprising GM. The first led to a major failure and the second to a substantial success (Hanawalt and Rouse 2010).

In 1981, General Motors ...