6.3.3 Commercial System Development Models

Abstract

The authors believe that system engineers commonly fail to include the full sweep of program possibilities in their view. Their views do not always encompass the full programmatic scope of marketing, system development, and programmatic life cycle issues. As a result they are not able to contribute to their full capacity in the evolution of maximally effective strategies for their enterprise. This paper does two things of value to this engineer so constrained: (1) attempts to expand the readers model of the development environment to the ultimate and (2) offers, in the process, a general model that includes within it several commercial models as well as the fairly traditional aerospace/defense development model. The authors maintain that essentially the same system engineering process will be effective within any of these particular applications of the general model, though the practitioner will have to make choices among alternative techniques.