March in December

Later this year I will do a short guest appearance, again, in the Vinnova-funded VCC project March/DFEA2020 so today I’m doing a bit of reading, catching up if you will. One of my recurring concerns in the area of MBSE is that there’s really not that much to catch up to. It still seems as if the prevailing ideas are the top-down approach in some form where either method has their solution to achieve traceability and a “Russian doll” situation.

I’m more interested in what aspects of modeling and systems engineering that will benefit your organization and constantly improve performance. To me most of the large MBSE initiatives/methods are very bulky and impose a clear and present risk of putting a lid on engineering and innovation.

Some random questions I find interesting:

How do you move focus from verification to validation? The ability to do trial and error, short prototyping loops etc. are vital, what do you need to support this?

How do you push “decision power” closer to the problem? With an over-weight top-down approach this is impossible. How about creating a more loosely coupled architecture based on patterns and some well-placed poles in the ground designed to keep the solution within acceptable boundaries compared to important attributes?

If you product is multi-faceted you will be using different tools and languages to describe it (don’t try to dig with a fork if you have spoon), how can you provide aid to minimize hand-offs, or at least confusion in hand-offs? Instead of attacking traceability you might need to start in a different end, to really understand the information need and information structure in your organization.

If you are implementing parts of the system in-house you want to give the SW-department the best possible pre-requisites in order to do their job, how can we do the same for those parts developed by suppliers? Can models help us increase transparency where needed in our supplier communication?

Models instead of documents push towards construction and engineering, if our organization has started to lose touch with those disciplines we are in danger of applying Models Based Systems Drawing instead. How can we mitigate that imminent risk?

And why is it that it is so rare to find the notion of a lean or agile mindset in conjunction with MBSE? If we want to run our implementation according to agile principles we need to understand the implications and changes in approach needed when it comes to architecture, integration, systems engineering etc.

Volvo

I haven’t really had time to think about the blog for a while but the world apparently haven’t stopped moving even so ;)


The purchase of Volvo Car Corporation is now a fact. Having worked at, and for, Volvo for quite some years I’ve followed the events with great interest. I know that the same people that have had issues with Ford will now have issues with Geely and think back at Ford as the “good old times”, that is inevitable but also quite natural since it’s a typical pessimistic way of life.

If I had still worked at Volvo I would think the separation from Ford or Europe would be sad… mostly because I enjoyed working with the people in Cologne (as the separation from Jaguar was sad since a lot of good guys worked there as well)… and in some ways FOE pushed VCC to excel and we learned a lot working together.

I also think that the people at VCC really learned how to work in an international environment something that of course will benefit them with a Chinese owner as well.

No one knows how the new owners really think, but I tend to have an optimistic view so maybe this is Volvo catching a break; a chance to become an even better company. Hopefully they have learned a lesson with regards to rigorous processes, large corporate frameworks and similar and choose to approach development in the future with a more lean approach.

If Li Shufu really means what he says then Volvo’s fate is in her own hands.

November rain

Still wet, still November, though this morning I felt awesome riding my 7 clicks to work. The Koss on, playing some sort of soundtrack to my life, and as we now thanks to Tom Rowland it is music that triggers some kind of response.

Well the chemical bro in my ears made me creative and I got some good ”uppslag” (not the kind of uppslag translated into centerfold) with regards to my Vinnova work.

I’ll see if I can play in some of those ideas as questions at the training in xtUML and Bridgepoint that will start here at the office in about 30 minutes. If you run you can make it. As you know I’ve taken a keen interest to xtUML and it will be very interesting to hear the tool vendor’s perspective as new input.

Also, strangely enough, I miss Volvo Cars a bit this morning. There is something special about setting up a large international project as we did in 05/06. Hard work, lots of travel, tons of politics and great fun (at least in retrospect 2 years later). Most of all I miss, this morning, that creative but also conflict-filled mix of cultures working with engineers and managers from different countries. Perhaps it is because I’m on a solo mission at the moment and any conflict in my “team” could be classed as some sort of delusion.

"That's what I'm talking about,
empathy. It's about as useless as the Winter Olympics ...
This February on NBC."