Aligning systems engineering and project management standards to improve the management of processes

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1 Aligning systems engineering and project management standards to improve the management of processes Rui XUE 1,2, Claude BARON 1,2, Philippe ESTEBAN 1,3 Abd-El-Kader SAHRAOUI 1,4 1 CNRS, LAAS, 7 av. du col. Roche, F Toulouse, France {rxue,claude.baron,philippe.esteban,sahraoui}@laas.fr 2 Univ. de Toulouse, INSA, LAAS, F Toulouse, France 3 Univ de Toulouse, UPS, LAAS, F Toulouse, France 4 Univ de Toulouse, UTM, LAAS, F Toulouse, France Abstract. For achieving the success of the project, relying on the systems engineering processes or project management processes is not sufficient and projects often fail due to deficient systems engineering practices or project management practices, or, at least, due to a lack of a coherency/consistency between the two aspects. So it is necessary to correctly implement systems engineering and project management processes during the whole project. This issue of SE and PM integration lies at the very heart of current research concerns. It is at the core of economic and industrial concerns. The goal of this paper is to analyze and compare the five important systems engineering standards (ANSI/EIA 632, ISO/IEC 15288, IEEE 1220, INCOSE Handbook and SEBoK) and the two project management standards (PMBoK and ISO 21500) to evaluate the consistency and inconsistency in order to facilitate the management of the projects and improve their possibility of success. Keywords: systems engineering; project management; standard; comparison and analysis 1 Introduction Systems engineering and project management, whatever the terminology used [1], are both critical to achieve the success of projects. Indeed, with the growing scale of projects, the roles of the project manager and systems engineers are more critical than ever. However, for many years, a cultural barrier has been growing between practitioners of systems engineering and of program management. While project management has overall project accountability and systems engineering has accountability for the technical and systems elements of the project, some systems engineers and project managers have developed the mindset that their work activities are separate from each other rather than part of an organic whole. Consequently, work often costs more, takes longer, and provides a suboptimal solution for the customer or end user. How to bridge the gap between project management and systems engineering recently became of increasing importance in industry. The INCOSE (International Council on Systems Engineering) and the PMI (Project Management Institute) have recognized the importance of integrating systems engineering with project manage- adfa, p. 1, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

2 ment; together they took out a survey to analyze this question. They identified four methods that can improve the integration of both domains. Exploring the first one, the goal of this paper is to compare the five important systems engineering standards (ANSI/EIA 632 [2], ISO/IEC [3], IEEE 1220 [4], INCOSE HANDBOOK [5] and SEBoK [6]) and the two significant project management standards (PMBoK [7] and ISO [8]) in order to evaluate the coherency of standards with regard to the processes they describe and that are involved through the whole project in order to facilitate the management of the projects and improve their chances of success. Our final goal is to identify among them a pair of most compatible standards from the point of view of the management of system engineering processes and to align them. In section 2, we explain how important integrating systems engineering with project management is and give the background and the research status over this question. Section 3 introduces and compares five systems engineering and two project management standards. Based on the comparison of standards, section 4 gives the conclusion on comparing the most important standards of both domains. 2 Current Situation Schlager [9] was the first to promote systems engineering in 1950s as a systematic approach for engineering complex industrial systems. On the other hand, it was also in the 1950s that organizations started to systematically apply project management tools and techniques to complex engineering projects [10]. However, aligning systems engineering with project management has only been paid attention in the beginning of 21th Century. The point is that the two disciplines can be disjoint, partially intersecting, or one can be seen as a subset of the other. Sharon put forward that systems engineering involves product domain and project management involves project domain [1]. Howard Eisner in [11] not only defines and describes the essentials of project and systems engineering management but shows the critical relationship and interconnection between project management and systems engineering, to enable both engineers and project managers to understand their roles and to collaborate. Fig. 1. The result of the survey [12] One way to address such challenge could be using the systems of systems paradigm [13]. At the normative level, in order to help organizations overcome the resultant inefficiencies of non-collaborative practices, the Project Management Institute (PMI)

3 and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) both recognized the need to improve integration of practices between their professional communities [14]. In October 2012, they conducted a survey to better understand how PM and SE are lead and could be integrated within the organizations to improve the probability of projects success [15]. As shown in Fig 1, they proposed four methods to reduce the unproductive tension between the systems engineers and project managers. In 2012 too, the INCOSE Chesapeake chapter formed a SE/PM Working Group in order to enhance program success through the improved integration of shared practices [16]. The goal of this paper is to align SE with PM exploring the first option of Fig.1: using standards from both domains and try to align them. 3 Analysis and Comparison of Standards Since 1969, many system SE and PM standards have been elaborated in different application fields, such as military, aeronautics, automatic and management. The ANSI/EIA -632, ISO/IEC and IEEE-1220, INCOSE HANDBOOK, SEBoK, PMBoK and ISO play the most important roles. Section 3.1 gives an overview of SE standards, analyzes and compares them considering their ability to manage SE; Section 3.2 introduces and compares PM standards. 3.1 Comparison of the Systems Engineering Standards Many SE standards have been drawn up in different fields of application, such as military, aeronautics, automatic and management [17,18,19] since The first standard widely used is ANSI/EIA 632; after this standard, many organizations developed their own standard. For example, the ISO/IEC was published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the IEEE [19]. In [19] we introduce the five main SE standards. As some overlap exists between SE and PM, some processes relative to project management domain (Project Management Processes, PMP) can be identified in SE standards. Thus this paper highlights these PMP in each standard. ANS I/EIA 632. This standard provides a systematic approach to engineering and reengineering a system. It defines 13 processes, 34 requirements (in fact like the subprocess) at total. One of the most useful features of this standard is the close connection between the processes; they are coordinated throughout the project. It defines the processes at an intermediate level and includes the whole systems life cycle, but focuses on the conception, development, production, utilization and support, just referring a little to the retirement. It also offers some PMP, such as the planning process, assessment process and controlling process.

4 Fig. 2. Hierarchical organization of the ANSI/EIA 632 standard As shown in the Fig 2, the ANSI/EIA 632 organizes its processes into 5 groups. The Technical Management process group is related to the project management aspect and includes the PMP. Although it defines some processes about the project management, but these processes just involve a little to PM, so they are not enough for the project managers to manage the project. This standard although provides the processes for engineering systems, but it does not define the tool or method for how to implement the processes through the whole project. Fig. 3. Hierarchical organization of the IEEE 1220 standard IEEE This standard defines the requirements for an enterprise s total technical effort related to development of products and processes that will provide life cycle support for products. It focuses on the technical processes and provides an approach fit for products development in a system context. Compared with the ANSI/EIA 632 and ISO/IEC 15288, it intends to define the SE processes at a high level of detail. It also includes the whole systems life cycle, but focuses on the conception, development and production. It just offers one process, the Quality Management requirement that belongs to PMP. As shown in the Fig. 4, this standard is not organized into pro-

5 cess groups. The structure of this standard is not similar to the others. It defines 6 stages for systems engineering, but after we analyze the definition of those stages, in fact, it defines the same systems life cycle as the ISO/IEC Its most useful feature is that it can be used in complement to ISO/IEC This standard just defines one process related to project management processes, the quality management process, because this standard focuses on the development stage of the systems life cycle. Fig. 4. Hierarchical organization of the ISO/IEC standard ISO/IEC This standard provides a comprehensive set of life cycle processes. It defines 26 processes at the process level and includes the whole system life cycle, from conception to the retirement of the systems and the processes cover all the stages. Like the ANSI/EIA 632, it also offers some PMP, such as the configuration management, information management and controlling process. As shown in Fig. 3, the ISO/IEC defines 4 process groups: agreement processes, enterprise processes, project processes and technical processes. The Enterprise Processes and Project Processes groups offer a partial overlap with project management processes. This standard defines more PMP than ANSI/EIA 632. But it has the same problem that is it does not provide nor specify systems engineering methods or procedures to address detailed process requirements for the application of this standard. INCOS E S E HANDBOOK. This standard aligns with the ISO/IEC standard; it defines the same processes as the ISO/IEC 15288, so its organizational structure is the same as the ISO/IEC It also considers both the technical and management processes. It has been the most detailed standard until SEBoK was published in The most interesting feature of this standard is that it not only defines the systems engineering processes, say what to do, but also provides some methods and tools about how to do during the whole project. SEB ok. The SEBoK (Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge) refers to all the other systems engineering standards, such as the ANSI/EIA-632, ISO/IEC and IEEE-1220, but it refers more to the ISO/IEC This standard is the most detailed standard so far.

6 Fig. 5. Hierarchy of the SEBoK standard As the Fig. 5 shows, there are five groups of processes in this standard, the fifth being Systems Engineering Management. So there are some identical processes, such as the systems implementation process, the system integration process and the system validation process. In fact, all the technical processes of the ISO/IEC are included in the SEBoK. The SEBoK just changes some process names, divides and integrates some processes. It uses all the processes from the enterprise processes and project processes of the ISO/IEC-15288, for the aspect of technical processes. It breaks the technical processes of ISO/IEC and assembles them into 14 systems engineering processes. This standard points out the two domains of systems engineering: the systems engineering domain (as technical processes that we introduced before) and the systems engineering management domain (in this paper we call it project management processes) clearly. It describes the processes for both domains at the same level of details. It recognizes the importance of the implementation of management processes during the systems engineering, so it increases the proportion of the management processes. It is the first SE standard that puts forward the importance of systems engineering management explicitly. Conclusion on the Systems Engineering Standar ds. After having analyzed of each SE standard, we compare them according to 9 criteria (in particular considering the System Engineering Management Processes (SEMP)) and defined for each a profile. Content of standard Focus of systems life cycle Table 1. Profiles of the five SE standards ANSI/EIA-632 IEEE-1220 ISO/IEC INCOSE HANDBOOK SEBoK 13 processes 8 processes 25 processes 25 processes 26 processes 34 requirements Conception and development all the systems life cycle all the systems life cycle all the systems life cycle Number of pages all the systems life cycle

7 Level of details Context of application Program and Program and Enterprise Enterprise External environment project environmenronment project envi- environment environment Year of publication Reversion frequency Number of SEMP SEMP s proportion 3/13 1/14 12/25 12/25 12/26 In today's environment, there is an ever-increasing need to develop and produce systems that are robust, reliable, high quality, supportable, cost-effective, and responsive to the needs of the customer or user. With the systems increasing complexity, Systems Engineering standards become more and more detailed. The newest standard SEBoK has more than 800 pages and includes the most a lot of disciplines about systems engineering. The more recent SE standards are mainly based on the ISO/IEC Moreover, as the industrial organizations have paid more and more attention on the project management processes, we can notice that almost half of the processes in the ISO/IEC are related to project management. 3.2 Comparison of the Project Management Standards The PM standards have been developed later than the SE standards but more and more attention has been paid lately on project management. Two important PM standards have been drawn up. The first international PM standard is the PMBoK (A Gu ide to the project management body of knowledge); it was firstly published in 1996, it has been updated five times, and the last version is the fifth version that was published in The second famous standard is the ISO that was published in 2012 for the first time by the ISO. P MBoK. Published by the Project Management Institute, the purpose of this standard is to provide the knowledge, processes, skills, tools and techniques that have a significant impact on the project success [7]. It defines 5 process groups and 10 knowledge areas. It not only defines the processes for PM, but also provides the tools and methods for how to implement the processes. The processes cover the whole systems life cycle, from conception to the retirement of the systems. This standard is the most famous project management guide for the project managers. Table 2. Structure of the PMBoK Five process groups Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and controlling, Closing Ten knowledge areas Project integration management, Project scope management, Project time management, Project cost management, Project quality management, Project human resource management, Project communications management,

8 Project risk management, Project procurement management, Project stakeholder management. ISO The ISO refers to many standards, such as the PMBoK and the IPMA (International Project Management Association).This standard defines five process groups and ten subjects (the same as the knowledge area in PMBoK). There is less difference between the two PM standards, just the level of detail; the PMBOK is more detailed than ISO Five process groups Initiating, Planning, Implementing Controlling, Closing Table 3. Structure of the ISO Ten subjects Project integration management, Project scope management, Project time management, Project cost management, Project quality management, Project resource management, Project communications management, Project risk management, Project procurement management, Project stakeholder management. According the table 2 and table 3, we can find that there are very little difference between the two standards, just some names of the process groups and the knowledge area. In the ISO 21500, it uses the implementing instead of executing in PMBoK, the controlling instead of the monitoring and controlling and the project resource management instead of the project human resource management. Conclusion on the Project Management Standards. Table 4 compares all the SE PM standards according to 5 criteria. After comparing the two PM standards, we get the conclusion that the contents of the standards are almost the same. But the ISO is only 47 pages and is limited to the introduction of the process, their inputs and their outputs. The ISO processes are more likely to be oriented towards a cascade approach of the scope definition rather than an interactive approach. So the ISO is maybe less attractive for agile organization. The first edition of PMBoK was published very early and it has been updated for four times, so it is more famous and popular than ISO Table 4. Conclusion on the two project management standards PMBoK 5 th ISO Content of standard 5 process groups, 10 knowledge 5 process groups, 10 subjects areas Number of pages Level of details Year of publication Revision frequency

9 3.3 Synthesis All SE standards describe good systems engineering practices. They may suggest a life cycle to provide a context for their recommendation. In short, the EIA-632 standard is more suitable for engineering enterprise-based systems; it focuses more on the technical management, validation and verification aspects. The IEC-15288:2008 standard is more suitable for engineering complex systems, especially projects that cover an entire system life cycle; there are some other SE standards that are based on it. The IEEE-1220 standard is more suitable for smaller systems and focuses on the development stage rather than the system life cycle or the technical management aspects. The INCOSE handbook has the same processes as ISO 15288, but it provides some tools and methods for systems engineering. The SEBoK is the most detailed SE standards, but it also refers more to ISO So for the systems engineering, the ISO15288 is the most suitable SE standard for meeting our requirement. After comparing the two PM standards, we get to the conclusion that the content of the standards are almost the same. But the ISO is only 47 pages and is limited to the introduction of the process, their inputs and their outputs. The ISO processes are more likely to be oriented towards a cascade approach of the scope definition rather than an interactive approach. So the ISO is maybe less attractive than PMBoK for agile organization. Moreover, we can notice that the first edition of PMBoK was published very early and that since it has been updated for four times; it is more famous and more popular than the ISO Conclusion To develop the system quickly and efficiently, it is necessary to correctly implement SE processes and PM processes. One first goal of this paper was to provide enterprises with objective elements to choose two reference standards for their projects from the SE standard and the PM standard. This goal is reached after our analysis of standards from both domains. However, the originality of the paper relies in that it presented an analysis of five SE standards and the two PM standards, considering not only the SE processes, but also the PM ones, in order to be able to align practices and make them more coherent. This paper thus compared the standards from both domains in order to evaluate the compatibility of standards with regard to how they manage Systems Engineering processes. Considering the analysis, the choice of the most compatible ones to guide Systems Engineering on one side and Project Management on the other seems to be the ISO /IEC and the PMBoK. Choosing these standards should thus improve the probability of success of projects. However, aligning standards remains one solution to coordinate practices and processes; according to [12], other means must be associated to this alignment of processes to improve the success of projects, such as sharing responsibilities and decisions for example.

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