Agile Systems Engineering
Authors: Rick Dove, Kerry Lunney, Michael Orosz, Mike Yokell
Agile systems engineering (Dove et al, 2023, ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-10) is a principle-based method for designing, building, sustaining, and evolving systems when knowledge is uncertain and/or environments are dynamic. Agile systems engineering is being agile, not doing agile. Thus, Agile System Engineering is a what, not a how.
Concepts
The common use of the terms agile and agility are fundamental to its application in systems engineering. Agile simply means able to move quickly and easily. Agile is an adjective, as in an agile development approach or an agile person. Agility is a noun, as in systems engineering agility, or he has impressive agility for a person of his size.
Within systems of software engineering, agile is a development approach based on iterative development, frequent inspection and adaptation, and incremental deliveries in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration in cross-functional teams and through continual stakeholder feedback (ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-1:2024, 3.4)
Likewise, Systems engineering (SE) agility is a “strategy-based method for designing, building, sustaining, and evolving purpose-fulfilling creations when knowledge is uncertain and operational environments are dynamic” (Dove et al, 2023, ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-10). Agile SE is a thoughtful engagement with opportunities and threats in the environment. Figure 1 shows a spectrum of life cycle approaches. All life cycle approaches fall somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum.
Background Context
In 1991, the US Department of Defense (Nagel and Dove, 1991) funded a project to investigate what would drive competition in manufacturing enterprises after the then-active scramble to become more Lean manufacturing (a term related to the Toyota Production System (Liker, 2004)) had stabilized. The results of that project used the concept of agility and the word agile as a way to describe how organizations could accommodate the increasing frequency of change in markets and technologies. Over the next four years, the Agility Forum, funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Agency) at Lehigh University, led 1200 participants from 125 organizations through a collaborative discovery process across a broad base of business and engineering areas (Dove and LaBarge, 2014). The initial focus on agile manufacturing evolved quickly during the early 1990s into agile systems, agile enterprises, and agile command and control. This led in 2001 to the adoption of the word "agile" to describe a variety of new ways to develop software (e.g. agile software development) (Fowler and Highsmith, 2001). In 2014, INCOSE established "agile systems engineering" as one of its top priorities (Dove and Schindel 2019).
Guidelines for SE Agility
Eight core aspects (Dove et al, 2023, ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-10) are each explained succinctly as a Why (need) and a What (behavior), with some examples of How (method). Though these aspects are core strategies for any kind of agile engineering, the purpose and descriptions here are for application at the systems engineering level rather than the domain engineering level.
Each of the aspects can individually improve capability to deal with uncertain knowledge and dynamic environments in any engineering process; but to have something intended as an agile engineering process at either domain or system level requires multiple aspects operating in concert. Individual aspects are strategic concepts that can tactically manifest over a range of intensity. Thus, the degree of agility is a product of how many of these aspects are operational as well as how effectively each one contributes to the agility required by the operating environment. Big bang concurrent implementation of all aspects is not necessary to gain agility benefits.
The eight strategic aspects (Dove et al, 2023, ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-10) of SE agility are:
- adaptable modular architecture
- iterative incremental development
- attentive situational awareness
- attentive decision making
- common-mission teaming
- shared-knowledge management
- continual integration and test
- being agile: operations concept
Adaptable Modular Architectures
Needs: Facilitated product and process experimentation, modification, and evolution.
Behaviors: Composable and reconfigurable product and process designs from variations of reusable assets.
Discussion: One fixed process approach won’t fit all projects, so an appropriate process should be easy to compose and evolve according to context and usage experience. Variations of reusable assets are built over time as features are modified for different contextual usage.
A hallmark of agile systems engineering is iterative incremental development, which modifies work in process as suitability is repetitively evaluated. The agility of the process depends upon the agility of the product so both process and product can be easily changed.
Iterative Incremental Development
Needs: Minimize rework, maximize quality, facilitate innovation.
Behaviors: Incremental loops of building, evaluating, correcting, and improving capabilities.
Discussion: Generally, increments create capabilities and iterations add and augment features to improve capabilities.
- Increment cycles are beneficially timed to coordinate events such as integrated testing and evaluation, capability deployment, experimental deployment, or release to production.
- Increments may have constant or variable cadence to accommodate management standards or operational dynamics.
- Iteration cycles are beneficially timed to minimize rework cost as a project learns experimentally and empirically.
Attentive Situational Awareness
Needs: Timely knowledge of emergent risks and opportunities.
Behaviors: Active monitoring and evaluation of relevant internal and external operational environmental factors.
Discussion: Are things being done right (internal awareness) and are the right things being done (external awareness)? Having the agile capability for timely and cost-effective change does little good if you don’t know when that ability should be exercised. Situational awareness can be enhanced with systemic methods and mechanisms.
Attentive Decision Making
Needs: Timely corrective and improvement actions.
Behaviors: Systemic linkage of situational awareness to decisive action.
Discussion: Empower decision making at the point of most knowledge. As a counter example, technical debt (a term for knowing something needs correction or improvement but postponing action) is situational awareness without a causal link to prompt action.
Common-Mission Teaming
Needs: Coherent collective pursuit of a common mission.
Behaviors: Engaged collaboration, cooperation, and teaming among all relevant stakeholders.
Discussion: Collaboration, cooperation, and teaming are not synonymous, and need individual support attention. Collaboration is an act of relevant information exchange among individuals, cooperation is an act of optimal give and take among individuals, and teaming is an act of collective endeavor toward a common purpose.
Continual Integration & Test
Needs: Early revelation of system integration issues.
Behaviors: Integrated test and demonstration of work-in-process.
Discussion: Discovering integration issues late in development activities can impact cost and schedule with major rework. Synchronizing multiple domain engineering activities via continual integration and test provides faster and clearer insight into potential system integration issues.
Needs: Accelerated mutual learning and single source of truth for internal and external stakeholders.
Behaviors: Facilitated communication, collaboration, and knowledge curation.
Discussion: There are two kinds of knowledge to consider. Short time frame operational knowledge: what happened, what’s happening, what’s planned to happen. Long time frame curated knowledge: what do we know of reusable relevance, e.g., digital artifacts, lessons learned, and proven practices.
Being Agile
Needs: Attentive operational response to evolving knowledge and dynamic environments.
Behaviors: Sensing, responding, evolving.
Discussion: Agile systems engineering is not about doing Agile, it is about being agile. Being agile is a behavior, not a procedure—a behavior sensitive to threats and opportunities in the operational environment, decisive when faced with threat or opportunity, and driven to improve these capabilities. Deciding how to implement any of the core aspects, even this one, should be done with sense-respond-evolve principles in mind as aspect objectives.
References
Works Cited
Dove, R, et al. 2023. Agile Systems Engineering – Eight Core Aspects. INCOSE, 2023
Dove, R. and LaBarge, R. 2014. Fundamentals of agile systems engineering – part 1 & part 2. International Council on Systems Engineering, International Symposium, Las Vegas, NV, 30Jun-3Jul.
Dove, R. and Schindel, W. 2019. Agile Systems Engineering Life Cycle Model for Mixed Discipline Engineering. Proceedings International Symposium. International Council on Systems Engineering. Orlando, FL, July 20-25.
Fowler, M. and Highsmith, J. 2001. The Agile Manifesto. Dr. Dobb's Journal, August.
Liker, J. Toyota Way, 2004. 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer, McGraw Hill, 2004.
Nagel, R and Dove, R. 1991. 21st Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy – An Industry-led View, Eds. Goldman, S and Preiss, K. Diane Publishing Company 1991.
ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-10. (2025 - Under Development). Systems and software engineering — Life cycle management. Part 10: Guidelines for systems engineering agility. Geneva, Switzerland: International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electrotechnical Commission, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Available athttps://www.iso.org/standard/90086.html.
INCOSE. 2023. "Chapter 4.2.2" in Systems Engineering Handbook: A Guide for System Life Cycle Processes and Activities, 5th Edition. Ed(s): D. Walden, T.M. Shortell, G.J. Roedler, B.A. Delicado, O. Mornas, Y. Yew-Seng, D. Endler. San Diego, CA: International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). Available at https://www.incose.org/publications/se-handbook-v5.
Primary References
None.
Additional References
SE Agility Primer. INCOSE.