CASE 2013 Planning Meetings - Grapevine, TX; AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting

CASE 2013 Planning Meetings - Grapevine, TX; AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting

These notes cover several meetings/discussions relative to the planning for the 2013 CASE Event. Since the meetings were all related and covered the same issues, it was just easier to merge all the information into one set of notes. Thanks to everyone who provide their notes and comments as input to this document (hey, I’m crowdsourcing here!). The meetings include:

·  CASE Track 2 planning meeting. Monday, January 7th, 2013

o  Steve Dunn, Mark Melanson, Jim Blohowiak, Allison Lauderbach, David Dress (on phone)

·  CASE Planning Committee Meeting - 8:00 AM, Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Allen Arrington
Mark Melanson
John Eiler
Ed Marquart
Dave Maroney
Chi Mai / Tony Williams
Steven D’Urso
Carmela Brittingham
Wilson Felder
Sophia Bright
Alison Lauderbach / Jim Blohowiak
Laura McGill
Steven Dunn
Anna McGowan
Megan Scheidt / Karen Sklencar
Sharon Grace
Craig Day
Jim Vasatka
Matt French / (On the phone)
Jimmie McEver
Janice Saylor
Dominic Lapus
Nancy Andersen

·  Aviation 2012 Planning Committee Meeting - 9:30 AM, Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

·  ASI_WG Meeting – 8:30 AM, Wednesday, January 9th, 013

·  Management Roundtable – 7:30 AM, Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

o  Arrington, Bright, Felder, Irvine, Khodadoust, McGowan, McGill

·  Plus several ad hoc discussions.

The primary topics discussion during the week were:

·  Track status.

·  Program layout (intro and wrap-up sessions).

·  CASE themes

·  Capturing CASE

·  Call for Proposals – we did not cover this in Grapevine, but it was addressed the following week during the CASE planning committee telecon.

·  Workshop (Management Roundtable)

A little background for folks new to the discussion at the meetings. For 2013, CASE will be part of the larger Aviation Forum (August 12-14, Los Angeles Hyatt Regency Century Plaza). Unlike 2012 when CASE was simply collocated with SPACE, in 2013 CASE will be an integral part of the overall forum. This will change our mode of operation a bit as we need to ensure that the themes from the overall forum flow through all three levels of the event:

·  Plenary – Professional Insight

·  Integration – Systems-level engagement

·  Discipline – Technical exchange

Jim Vasatka, the General Chair for Aviation 2013, talked about the AIAA New Event Model and the business model for Aviation 2013. Overall, we are trying to increase AIAA’s relevance to the aerospace community. The forums are designed to reach out to all segments of the aerospace industry, not just those doing the technical discipline work (with whom AIAA has a great track record). We will be looking to engage the young professionals to get their input and vision on the “big picture” for AIAA.

Aviation 2013 overall theme: Charting the future of flight

Schedule:

Details for the CASE program layout are provided in the planning spreadsheet. The general plan is listed here:

·  Monday, 8/12, 0800-1200 – CASE workshop (Management Round Table)

·  Tuesday (8/13) and Wednesday (8/14) – CASE program; three parallel tracks with an opening plenary on Tuesday morning and an afternoon wrap-up session on Wednesday

Milestone is to have the program content in place by the beginning of March.

Wilson gave us an opening pep talk by recalling Mike Griffin’s position that “systems engineering is not a discipline as we have no theory.” However, CASE can be the vehicle to develop the theory. The challenge is to do the math, i.e. provide theories with mathematical development and produce landmark research with mathematical background. Also there is no comprehensive glossary for SE (perhaps another opportunity for a product from CASE).

Track status.

·  Track 1 – Laura indicated that her track is not as mature as she would like. Model based engineering will be a central element to the track 1 content. Looking for ties with tracks 2 and 3.

·  Track 2 – Mark provided the update; he, David and Steve have three sessions in the works at present:

o  Methodology of V&V; moving test earlier in the design process; session promoting inclusion of testers and testing requirements earlier in requirements generation and design process.

§  Affordability effort for Boeing 777X

o  Merging M&S with test; strategic view: Issues associated with computational methods and experimental ground test

§  Issues with integrated CFD and GT – what do we need to do for the future

§  Marrying modeling with wind tunnel tests

o  DoD formally moving test earlier (5000 doc)

§  Bring in NASA, FAA, industry.

§  The second and third are a paired set of sessions.

o  Additional topics:

§  Testing of complex systems with a mix of modeling, ground test, ranges.

§  From the Monday ASM that Laura moderated: Managing the interfaces

·  Management style versus leadership style.

·  Jimmie stated that the interfaces drive the behavior of the complex system as well as the challenges

o  Session design – probably four people, with questions at end

§  Keep it going; discussion can’t be allowed to die

§  Idea to video/audio all three tracks and allow attendees to watch later (expands material availability to attendees)

·  Track 3 – Sophia is leading a team that included Nancy, Anna-Maria and Reece. They have four sessions in mind:

o  Supply chain/supplier management logistics; engagement with the suppliers.

§  Get Sophia’s notes.

o  Work Force Issues – this is a good candidate for a cross-track topic.

§  How to better prepare the workforce from both the university and the employer training programs.

§  Many avenues to explore: attrition, skill set development, mentoring, knowledge capture, experience requirements for systems engineering, training.

§  Current plan is to have this as a joint session across all three tracks.

·  Have this during Block 4 on Wednesday morning (first session on Wednesday).

·  ”Developing the capability for SE”

·  Track 3 will take the lead for this session; Nancy will be the POC.

o  Project management and planning

o  Project management organization (Anna-Maria).

CASE Audience: While the target audience for CASE are Program Leads, Systems Engineers and Chief Engineers, there will be all levels of folks interested in CASE (those who “get it” and those who are learning).

·  Leadership not as a title but as an act.

·  Develop collaboration organically.

The audience for the CASE forums is a fairly sophisticated one in terms of systems engineering, eager to explore the more difficult and intellectually challenging corners of the discipline. However, the majority of AIAA members, as well as non-members who may wish to attend Aviation 2013 or the Space conference are still learning the basics of SE and PM. In order to serve the wider audience, we should plan to have sessions in the general technical tracks that deal with the subject matter (especially the conclusions) from the preceding year’s CASE. To that end:

·  Members of the CASE organizing committee should solicit papers for submission to Aviation 2013 among their colleagues.

·  There should be cross-membership between the CASE and Aviation2013 organizing committees, specifically, CASE should have representation on the paper selection panel for Aviation 2013 so that CASE 2012 relevant papers can be recognized as they are submitted.

·  The goal should be to end up with at least one, possibly a couple, of sessions at Aviation 2013 that serve to introduce the output of CASE 2012 to the wider audience.

·  Finally, in future years, the conclusions drawn from the immediately preceding CASE should be reported out at the following ASM (i.e.; CASE 2013 reports out at ASM 2014.)

Systems are too complex to divide as we used to do.

·  So, maybe use National Academy of Science model to adapt structure and evolving systems

o  Wilson: "an organism may be the best example of a complex system we know"

·  Loss of situational awareness.

·  Dr. Snowdon: simple, complicated, complex, and chaos

·  Book: Working Together. With Alan Mulally – how to get the organization to work. Be creative with the boundaries.

·  Projects thought of as a puzzle – each piece is part of the whole; not independent

o  Discussion on appropriate model – mosaic vs. puzzle

·  Book: The Inventors Dilemma; 3 basic things: 1) Interfacing management, 2) managing emergent behavior, 3) leadership behavior

·  AIAA G135 guide (systems integration

Aviation and CASE Themes.

The CASE content must tie back into theme for AVIATION forum.

Summary of possible themes:

·  Complex vs. complicated and how to tie back to the typical project management tools

·  Programs as puzzles; complex system is a mosaic (Action to Anna-Maris on how to express this point).

·  Supply Chain

·  Workforce issues

·  Test involvement

·  Getting out of the silos

·  Leadership as a behavior, not a title

·  Interface management

·  Cynefin network and behavior (Holt – track 3).

·  Emergent behavior (management)

·  Integration with basic project management

Session logistics and Capturing CASE

·  Limit panels to about 4 members for a 2 hour session in order to maximize discussion time.

·  Limit introductions to what is pertinent to set the stage.

o  Use a trifold pamphlet like in Sydnor’s CASE 2012 session to list more detailed biographical information, session data, etc.

·  Moderator is key to success; will take some preparation work for a well-run session.

·  Rapporteurs are needed to capture the information from the session. But also expand the role of the session rapporteur to write up the paper on that session. This is more than note taking, but rather collecting the information/data and synthesizing that data into a final product for the session.

·  Each session will be assigned a rapporteur who will not only record the discussion in the session, but will then be committed to developing a paper synthesizing the ideas generated during that session, and presenting those in coherent manner reflecting best practices, consensus, or even disagreement among the participants. This paper will be of a standard suitable for peer reviewed publication (i.e., references, abstract, summary and the like) but of course will not be able to reflect the depth of work and conclusions one would expect in a peer reviewed publication. These papers will be subjected to editorial review by the members of the organizing committee. Allen will serve as the editor for this collection, which will be published in some form on line and perhaps in print, the requirement being that whatever the form of publication it will carry an AIAA referable document number so that it is available for use and reference by the community.

·  Crowd Sourcing (Audience inputs) + Synthesized Test (coordinated summary) = intellectual content capture.

o  Comments from enough people could produce a normal distribution of comments – most common will be repeated the most

·  Session/program layout:

o  Wilson indicated that 30 minutes should be sufficient for the introduction.

o  Will use Block 1 for the opening plenary.

o  We decided that a 30-minite closing session was not enough time (based in part on CASE 2012). Will use Block 6 on Wednesday afternoon for the CASE closing session and also keep the 30-minute wrap-up session for Wilson’s and the Track Chair’s final remarks.

CASE Workshop - Management Roundtable

·  We will keep the workshop format essentially the same as last year. That is, there will be one or more mini-case studies provided to the participants in advance (understanding that the advance material will probably be reviewed by the participants on the airplane on the way to CASE…) The Management TC will take charge of:

o  Logistics for the workshop. It is understood that the workshop is an integral component of CASE/Aviation 2013, so there will be AIAA staff support, logistics, and amenities as appropriate

o  Consolidating the attendee list and working to ensure participants attend the workshop. TCM will coordinate with the CASE and Aviation organizing committees to make sure the right people are invited and will want to attend. This means a solid CASE/Aviation 2013 program will be in place and ready well before the workshop attendees are solicited. Attendees will include a) TCM members, b) CASE speakers, organizers and session panelists, c) significant outside participants who have something to say about this year’s CASE topic.

o  Leading the conduct of the workshop itself.

·  The theme for CASE will be around the interfaces, interactions, or connections among the member systems in the overall complex system of systems. This interaction among member systems drives dynamic relationships among the functional aspects of system design, development, verification and validation, and program management. Wilson will take the action to develop a white paper (similar to last year’s “elephant in the mist” paper) that will frame this theme in preparation for the workshop. The workshop itself will serve to frame the remainder of CASE itself. We all agree that one aspect of the 2012 workshop that was extremely valuable was the opportunity for CASE thought leaders to engage in conversation around the CASE theme, so that they could speak with coherence when leading their respective sessions.

·  The SETC will undertake the preparation of the mini-case study(ies). They will use as a starting point one of several Raytheon SE cases to be supplied by Laura. We agree that if possible a space/missiles case should be chosen (just as a airplane case was selected last year) in order to reinforce the cross-domain nature of CASE’s vision. If possible, the SETC will construct several (3?) mini cases, each viewing the single basic case from a separate point of view. In last year’s workshop, the breakout groups were selected according to the three tracks. The idea this year is to write separate mini-cases each of which reflects a different point of view. The goal is to make these points of views consistent with different component systems involved in the overall case. We want to illuminate the difficulties that are specific and particular to complex systems – the inter-systemic interactions that involve all aspects of system design, development, test and management, including such disciplines as supply chain management and workforce preparation. As for last year, the mini-case study write-up should be limited to about three pages, so as to permit last minute reading and comprehension by the attendees.