Overcoming barriers to systems engineering process improvement

Neither systems engineering nor process improvement is new. Since 1992, INCOSE papers and others have been reporting success in documenting and improving processes. A considerable body of process improvement literature is available, particularly related to improvement of software development processes. Even systems engineering process improvement is gaining in popularity, judging from the increasing number of INCOSE papers detailing various efforts. Yet the nature of systems engineering poses challenges over and above those seen in other process improvement efforts. This paper focuses on identifying and resolving typical barriers to improving the systems engineering process. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Syst Eng 3: 59–67, 2000