[SystemSafety] Another question

[Olwen Morgan]

On 24/09/18 23:41, Les Chambers wrote

<snip>

 >>> ... I am with you on the UML. It's just a container for all the 
modelling techniques we've developed over the past 50 years. No 
developer has to consume all the Kool-Aid. You just take a sip and use 
what's useful in your own special >>> context. Why anyone would take a 
dislike to it is a mystery to me.

Beg to differ. If you explore the formal methods literature, you'll 
easily find modelling techniques that UML does not properly embrace. I 
dislike any formalism for systems engineering that is:

(a) not formally defined or has had formal definitions (clumsily) 
retro-fitted, or

(b) forces upon me a verbosity that more mathematically-based techniques 
do not.


... and as regards "lunatic fringe" environments, it remains true to say 
that if you don't know what you want:

(i)    you won't know when you've got it, or

(ii)   if you've belatedly decided what you do want, reworking what 
you've got that isn't what you want does not exactly have an impressive 
track record in systems engineering.

I may be wrong but I doubt that you'd find Sukhoi systems engineers 
working the way the F35 systems engineers have. Russian engineering 
seems to be predicated on a much more incremental philosophy ... which 
is quite possibly why US astronauts have to go to Baikonur to thumb a 
lift to the ISS.


O