Systems Engineering Consulting

 

ASE provides agency and corporate systems engineering consulting services in all phases of the product lifecycle including but not limited to:

Program Planning
Mid and long range planning (5-10 years) is an essential part of the resource planning within Agencies and Corporations. Creating a portfolio of projects that are to be deployed over the next 5-10 years requires a high level of stakeholder involvement, analysis, and continuous communications. Stakeholder involvement is essential to capture needs, gaps, and expectations. ASE provides consulting services for the analysis required to sequence the projects over time so that the highest value and most cost-effective projects get implemented first. Finally, the continuous communications are critical to reassess the portfolio each year as needs change, gaps, and expectations change.

Project Management

Project management is by definition required on all project endeavors. The Project Management Institute (PMI) has been the organizations that most companies and agencies look to for project management knowledge. Sometimes issue rise on the relationship of Project Management and Systems Engineering, this overlap and relationship are dynamic, and ASE provides consulting services and training as support to tailor this relationship for the organization and for specific activities such as risk management, configuration management, technical reviews, and decision gates to name a few.

System Integration

Most systems require integration with internal legacy elements or with external systems and often these legacy interfaces are undocumented, or the documentation is outdated. ASE provides consulting services to identify the interfaces, set up a management process for interfaces or if needed reverse engineering interfaces to integrate systems.

 

Concept Development

Projects start with some need or set of needs from the project sponsor, part of concept development is to capture and prioritize user needs. Needs assessment is both an initial activity and a carries on continuously the initial needs assessment is followed by the identification of multiple alternative ideas that will meet the stated needs. These alternatives are evaluated resulting in the selection of one or more promising candidates. Concept development or it is also known as Feasibility study, Mission Analysis, ASE provides consulting on methodologies for concept development including adding value analysis techniques to develop high-value concepts and adding a deployment strategy that provides the working high-value elements early to gain benefits as soon as possible.

Systems Engineering Planning

ASE provides consulting on Systems Engineering Planning. Systems Engineering Planning is one of four pillars of systems engineering activities for development along with Concept of Operations, Requirements Engineering and Verification and Validation, the Systems Engineering Planning provides a description of the Systems Engineering processes used and tailoring guidance for a project.

Concept of Operations

The Concept of Operations establishes the context for understanding the system requirements. ASE provides consulting and training on developing a concept of operations. The Concept of Operations describes how the current (AS-IS) or the future (TO-BE) system operates or is envisioned to operate. When replacing an existing system, the AS-IS, and TO-BE, it is important to identify the gaps in operations that need to be developed for the TO-BE system. The TO-BE is the envisioned system this is like “Starting at the Finish line.” A critical section in a concept of operations is the operational scenarios that illustrate how a function is to be performed.

Requirements Engineering

Requirements Engineering is the Engineering of requirements. In the broadest sense, requirements engineering would include the Need Assessment, Concept Exploration, and Concept of Operations. For this write-up we narrow the scope to the translation of needs and functions to requirements, defining the performing functions, decompose functions to lower levels, creating a buildable architecture and the allocation of functions to the elements of the architecture. Finally, writing a “good” requirement—one that is clear, concise, verifiable, ect.—then linking them to an element in the concept of operations e.g. a scenario or need. The requirement document is the most important procurement document that issued. It is the specification by which a development must implement the system and verified.

Verification and Validation
After implementation, the system it is verified by the project stakeholders. Verification is the process by which the stakeholder gives proof that the delivered system meets the requirements specified in the contract through demonstration, inspections, test, or analysis. ASE provides consulting in the development of verification plans, audits the verification procedures, and the verification of the system. Validation is performed by the Agency; proving that the system meets the stakeholder needs. The development team may or may not be involved with validation. ASE provides consulting in support of Validation planning and conducting validation.

Other

The ASE consulting services identified above are just some of the major areas in systems engineering that ASE has performed consulting services for. If you are interested in additional services, please feel free to call us and we can discuss the area.