Chapter Meetings (Western Cape)

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) can be a powerful aid in effectively managing projects, but it is also easily misunderstood and misapplied. Issues to be considered include: why WBS must not be just a breakdown of work, essential principles in adopting WBS as a management tool, failsafe rules for constructing effective WBS, relationships to other structures useful in project/engineering management, e.g. Systems Breakdown Structure (SBS), Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS), Organisational Breakdown Structure (OBS), Specification Breakdown Structure (Specification Tree), application of WBS to costing, scheduling, definition, risk analysis, measurement, reporting, organisational design, and control. Alwyn Smit is a Principal Consultant with Project Performance International (PPI). He has a B.Eng. (Electr) degree from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and is registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) as a professional engineer. He has spent the bulk of his career working in the South African defence industry as systems engineer and project manager on technology intensive projects, most recently as principal systems engineer with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR). Alwyn is a founding member of the South African Chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE SA) and an INCOSE Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP). He has served on the INCOSE SA management team in numerous roles including President. He is currently a co-opted member of the INCOSE SA Chapter Management Committee, a member of the Western Cape branch as well as an appointed INCOSE Ambassador. Alwyn is also a member of the System Dynamics Society and the International Institute of Business Analysis. Alwyn was a member of the South African Bureau of Standards Working Group SC-71C on Systems and Software Life Cycle Processes. He has also represented South Africa on the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 Working Group 7 (WG7) on Systems and Software Life Cycle Processes, developing the international systems engineering standard ISO/IEC 15288. Alwyn teaches postgraduate modules in Systems Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), Johannesburg. Since joining the PPI team, Alwyn has delivered public and on-site systems engineering related training in Australia, Europe, South America, South Africa and the USA. Presentation Slides — PDF (1.0 MB)

The development of an organization is a complex process: as a continuously changing organism, it is confined to a structure created in a continuously changing environment. This talk aims to give a broad and philosophical overview of the essential aspects of such an organism: the environment (legalities, paradigms and algorithms); the people in the organisation, planning for the future making use of opportunities and threats in uncertainty; and the structural aspects ensuring a proper fit for the organisation. Dr Willem Barnard obtained a DSc at the University of Pretoria in 1977. From 1969 – 1991 he had several positions in engineering, research and management in high technology sectors. In 1992 he became the managing director for Dorbyl. In 1994 he was appointed the Chief Executive Officer for KWV and held that position until 2007. Since then he is the Executive Chair for Vastech. Dr Barnard served on numerous boards and played a major role in establishing the importance of systems engineering and other technological capabilities for South Africa.

Despite technological advances seen in the past decades, several best practices for developing usable user interfaces are still too seldom being applied. Yet, the user interface of a software system is often its most complex and volatile component, where most of the problems in the end converge. While agile approaches aim at delivering often high quality batches of the system, they also run the risk of overseeing problems with the design of the user interface. To many people, the user interface is just a thin layer of coat covering the underlying system. But this is not true in the majority of cases: users will rebel against such user interfaces, leading to low productivity, low acceptance, too many errors, refusal to learn to use new features, boycott of the system, etc. In this talk we will see how agile approaches that strive to make the software development process controllable can be coupled to usage-centred development practices so that usable software can be delivered in time and with the expected quality. Giorgio Brajnik is Associate Professor at the University of Udine, Italy, where he teaches usage-centred development of web sites and object oriented programming. Recently he cofounded Interaction Design Solutions, a spinoff company specialized in software quality and automated testing methods; it helps software companies to produce better software. Giorgio is part of the International SKA development team and is visiting South Africa for the annual SKA Engineering Meeting. Presentation slides — PDF (3.4 MB) · Presenter photo — JPG (29.9 KB)

For almost ten years, the systems engineering community has been focused on the transformation from document-centric to model-based techniques. While most systems engineering organizations have completed pilot efforts, established appropriate communities of practice, and are plotting their path forward, this transformation is far from complete. In terms of the Roger’s innovation adoption lifecycle, we are beyond the early adopters, in the early majority, and moving towards the tipping point where model-based systems engineering becomes the expected framework and approach for systems engineering. Systems engineering remains a young discipline – one that must continue to learn and evolve, one where transitions should be viewed as waypoints along a journey rather than destinations themselves. While work remains to ensure the transformation to model-based techniques is both efficient and effective, it is time for the systems engineering community to begin looking beyond MBSE. When model-based is simply the way organizations practice systems engineering, what is the next evolution required to address next generation problems and deliver the organizational value required? How must the systems engineering practice evolve? What can we begin doing today – even in the continued implementation and adoption of MBSE – to prepare ourselves and our organizations to make that transition? Looking at the journey to date and the opportunities in the future, how can we characterize the next leg of the journey and plot a path forward for ourselves, our organizations, and the greater systems engineering practice? For over twenty years, David Long has focused on helping organizations increase their systems engineering proficiency while simultaneously working to advance the state of the art across the community. David is the founder and president of Vitech Corporation where he developed CORE®, a leading systems engineering software environment. He co-authored the book A Primer for Model-Based Systems Engineering and is a frequent presenter at industry events around the world. A committed member of the systems community, David is the immediate past president of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), a 10,000 member professional organization focused on sharing, promoting, and advancing the best of systems engineering. Presentation Slides — PDF (6.3 MB)

A vision to host INCOSE international events in South Africa was met with some scepticism at the 2009 INCOSE International Symposium in Singapore (IS2009). Undeterred, the vision was pursued with determination, resulting in the INCOSE SA Chapter hosting the first ever EMEA Systems Engineering Conference on the African continent in Somerset West in 2014 EMEASEC2014). The huge success of the conference, and continued promotion at international INCOSE events resulted in INCOSE Board approval, in April 2018, to host IS2020 in Cape Town. Having landed the coveted flagship event, the South Africa Chapter is now faced with the challenge to support the INCOSE Events Committee to ensure that IS2020 goes down in INCOSE annals as a most memorable and successful event. The participation of our South African members is important, hence we present a short tutorial to kick-start preparations for IS 2020 paper submissions. The following will be covered in the tutorial: • What is the role of a paper in a profession? • What is the difference between a presentation, a conference paper, and a journal paper? • The double-blind paper review process determines the quality of a paper. • System engineering is a social science and demands social science research. • Who should write a paper? What’s in it for the author?