The design-methods comparison project

Abstract

Early in the system design process, a design method must be chosen. This choice is usually dictated by what methods the designer has previously used, not by an open selection process. In this paper, we provide descriptions of some available design methods and examples of their use. In this project, we will develop benchmark problems that will be solved by a variety of design methods and will identify characteristics of problems that might make one system design method more or less appropriate. The top-level question we wish to answer is "for which type of problem is each method best?"If a system is to be built, then the system must ultimately be described as a collection of state machines. However, these state machines are often not created by the systems engineers. The systems engineers use some method to create a high-level abstraction of the desired system. Then they turn this abstraction over to the specialty engineers who actually reduce it to a collection of state machines. In this paper, we present solutions for a simple design problem by using the following 11 high-level system design methods: state transition diagrams, algorithmic state machine (ASM) notation, model-based system engineering, Graphical Description Language, RDD-100, structured analysis (using entity relationship diagrams, data-flow diagrams, and state transition diagrams with Ward-Mellor notation), functional decomposition, object-oriented analysis (OOA) with Shlaer-Mellor notation, OOA and object-oriented design (OOD) with Booch notation, an operational evaluation modeling-(OpEM)-directed graph, and IDEF0. Each method was used by an expert user of that method. The solutions presented make it obvious that the choice of a design method greatly effects the resulting system design. Index Terms-Architecture, design methodology, logic design, object-oriented methods. ).M. Alford is an independent consultant, Dean (M'97) received the M. A. degree in information system consulting from Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, in 1989 and the Ph.D. degree in management information systems from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1995. He is a Research Scientist at the Center for Management Information, University of Arizona. He provides consulting and research services on a number of topics, including electronic meeting systems (EMS), collaborative business process reengineering methods, and collaborative systems analysis and design methods. He has helped develop group-enabled activity and data modeling software to support technical and nontechnical users. He also developed structured meeting methods for use with these tools. The activity model software has since been made commercially available through Ventana Corporation, Tucson. His research interests include electronic meeting support of process and data modeling, business process reengineering, systems analysis and design, and group elicitation of information systems requirements.Jeremy Duke received the B.S. degree in systems (software) engineering in 1994 and the M.S. degree in systems engine...

Influence of the type of idea-generation method on the creativity of solutions

“…As a result of these studies, numerous contributions have developed techniques for creativity and methods for evaluating the creativity of outcomes. At this point, several authors defend the classifications of the methods (Bahill et al 1998;Shai et al 2008;Shah et al 2003) and studied why these different methods can produce different results (Reich et al 2012). Shah et al (2003) classify the methods for idea-generation in two main groups: intuitive and logical.…”

A Data Warehouse to Support Condition Based Maintenance (CBM)

“…A systems engineering methodology represents a systematic way of decomposing a high-level need into a set of well defined requirements and accompanying designs to satisfy these requirements. Many such processes are described and compared in [6]. We will select and apply a modification of a systems engineering methodology known as the Systems Engineering and Management Process (SEMP)…”

“…This process, developed at the United States Military Academy, helps engineers systematically design large-scale, complex systems to address problems [7]. The SEMP methodology satisfies the seven fundamental activities required in an effective systems engineering approach as defined by [6], and has been applied to hundreds of civil and military applications.…”

Evaluation of Selected Control Programming Languages for Process Engineers by Means of Cognitive Effectiveness and Dimensions

“…The comparison of 11 highlevel system design methods, among others the state transition diagram and state machine, is shown in [28]. Cao et al [29] presented case studies of visual and formal modeling and design.…”