Coordinating Control System Architecture, Documentation Structure, and Organizational Roles to Support Global Systems Engineering

This paper discusses Rolls-Royce ’ experience in implementing a standardized set of roles and control system requirements for its product development projects. It reviews the responsibilities of systems and software engineers, the task of system architecture and its implications on documentation structures. Industry guidelines allow for the definition of more detailed item-level requirements arising from the system architecture process. However, there is considerable ambiguity in the information transfers to the component life cycle processes and the distinction between these “item / derived requirements ” and “system requirements ” in general. A review of projects shows that Rolls-Royce programs have developed different approaches to the system architecting process. This demonstrates the variety of interpretations for the industry standards such as DO-178B and ARP-4754. It also provides a broad set of potential resources for a globally managed development program. However, the ambiguity in the industry standards means that the system architecting process is not always straightforward (as evidenced by its varying Rolls-Royce embodiments). The paper concludes by developing stories and use cases that help to address differing cultural perspectives, and to replace existing local stories with a new set of stories that can be globally recognized and adopted. Key words – system engineering, global product development, DO-178B, system / software life cycl