A work-breakdown structure (WBS) in project management and systems engineering is a deliverable-oriented breakdown of a project into smaller components. A work breakdown structure is a key project management element that organizes the team's work into manageable sections. The Project Management Body of Knowledge defines the work-breakdown structure as a "hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables."
The waterfall model is a breakdown of development activities into linear sequential phases, meaning they are passed down onto each other, where each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a specialization of tasks. The approach is typical for certain areas of engineering design. In software development, it tends to be among the less iterative and flexible approaches, as progress flows in largely one direction through the phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, deployment and maintenance. The waterfall model is the earliest SDLC approach that was used in software development.
Configuration management (CM) is a systems engineering process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. The CM process is widely used by military engineering organizations to manage changes throughout the system lifecycle of complex systems, such as weapon systems, military vehicles, and information systems. Outside the military, the CM process is also used with IT service management as defined by ITIL, and with other domain models in the civil engineering and other industrial engineering segments such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings.
Avionics software is embedded software with legally mandated safety and reliability concerns used in avionics. The main difference between avionic software and conventional embedded software is that the development process is required by law and is optimized for safety. It is claimed that the process described below is only slightly slower and more costly than the normal ad hoc processes used for commercial software. Since most software fails because of mistakes, eliminating the mistakes at the earliest possible step is also a relatively inexpensive and reliable way to produce software. In some projects however, mistakes in the specifications may not be detected until deployment. At that point, they can be very expensive to fix.
A statement of work (SOW) is a document routinely employed in the field of project management. It is the narrative description of a project's work requirement. It defines project-specific activities, deliverables and timelines for a vendor providing services to the client. The SOW typically also includes detailed requirements and pricing, with standard regulatory and governance terms and conditions. It is often an important accompaniment to a master service agreement or request for proposal (RFP).
Reliability engineering is a sub-discipline of systems engineering that emphasizes the ability of equipment to function without failure. Reliability describes the ability of a system or component to function under stated conditions for a specified period of time. Reliability is closely related to availability, which is typically described as the ability of a component or system to function at a specified moment or interval of time.
The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) is an architecture framework for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that provides visualization infrastructure for specific stakeholders concerns through viewpoints organized by various views. These views are artifacts for visualizing, understanding, and assimilating the broad scope and complexities of an architecture description through tabular, structural, behavioral, ontological, pictorial, temporal, graphical, probabilistic, or alternative conceptual means. The current release is DoDAF 2.02.
A United States defense standard, often called a military standard, "MIL-STD", "MIL-SPEC", or (informally) "MilSpecs", is used to help achieve standardization objectives by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Integrated logistics support (ILS) is a technology in the system engineering to lower a product life cycle cost and decrease demand for logistics by the maintenance system optimization to ease the product support. Although originally developed for military purposes, it is also widely used in commercial customer service organisations.
In United States military contracts, the contract data requirements list is a list of authorized data requirements for a specific procurement that forms a part of the contract.
MIL-STD-810, U.S. Department of Defense Test Method Standard, Environmental Engineering Considerations and Laboratory Tests, is a United States Military Standard that emphasizes tailoring an equipment's environmental design and test limits to the conditions that it will experience throughout its service life, and establishing chamber test methods that replicate the effects of environments on the equipment rather than imitating the environments themselves. Although prepared specifically for U.S. military applications, the standard is often applied for commercial products as well.
DOD-STD-2167A, titled "Defense Systems Software Development", was a United States defense standard, published on February 29, 1988, which updated the less well known DOD-STD-2167 published 4 June 1985. This document established "uniform requirements for the software development that are applicable throughout the system life cycle." This revision was written to allow the contractor more flexibility and was a significant reorganization and reduction of the previous revision; e.g.., where the previous revision prescribed pages of design and coding standards, this revision only gave one page of general requirements for the contractor's coding standards; while DOD-STD-2167 listed 11 quality factors to be addressed for each software component in the SRS, DOD-STD-2167A only tasked the contractor to address relevant quality factors in the SRS. Like DOD-STD-2167, it was designed to be used with DOD-STD-2168, "Defense System Software Quality Program".
Logistics Support Analysis (LSA) is a structured approach to increase efficiency of maintenance and reduces the cost of providing support by preplanning all aspects of Integrated Logistics Support. A successful LSA will define those support requirements that are ideal for the system design.
A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard.
MIL-STD-130, "Identification Marking of U.S. Military Property," is a specification that describes markings required on items sold to the Department of Defense (DoD), including the addition, in about 2005, of UII Data Matrix machine-readable information (MRI) requirements. MIL-STD-130 describes the materials allowed, minimum text size and fonts, format, syntax and rules for identifying marks on a part, where to locate this marking plus exceptions and unique situations, such as vehicle identification numbers, cell phone IDs, etc. Other non-identifying markings—such as "this end up"—are covered under MIL-STD-129.
In the United States military integrated acquisition lifecycle the Technical section has multiple acquisition "Technical Reviews". Technical reviews and audits assist the acquisition and the number and types are tailored to the acquisition. Overall guidance flows from the Defense Acquisition Guidebook chapter 4, with local details further defined by the review organizations. Typical topics examined include adequacy of program/contract metrics, proper staffing, risks, budget, and schedule.
Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria (TCSEC) is a United States Government Department of Defense (DoD) standard that sets basic requirements for assessing the effectiveness of computer security controls built into a computer system. The TCSEC was used to evaluate, classify, and select computer systems being considered for the processing, storage, and retrieval of sensitive or classified information.
A United States data item description (DID) is a completed document defining the data deliverables required of a United States Department of Defense contractor. A DID specifically defines the data content, format, and intended use of the data with a primary objective of achieving standardization objectives by the U.S. Department of Defense. The content and format requirements for DIDs are defined within MIL-STD-963C, Data Item Descriptions (2014).
This is a list of the individual topics in Electronics, Mathematics, and Integrated Circuits that together make up the Computer Engineering field. The organization is by topic to create an effective Study Guide for this field. The contents match the full body of topics and detail information expected of a person identifying themselves as a Computer Engineering expert as laid out by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying. It is a comprehensive list and superset of the computer engineering topics generally dealt with at any one time.
Human Systems Integration (HSI) is an interdisciplinary managerial and technical approach to developing and sustaining systems which focuses on the interfaces between humans and modern technical systems. The objective of HSI is to provide equal weight to human, hardware, and software elements of system design throughout systems engineering and lifecycle logistics management activities across the lifecycle of a system. The end goal of HSI is to optimize total system performance and minimize total ownership costs. The field of HSI integrates work from multiple human centered domains of study include training, manpower, personnel, human factors engineering, safety, occupational health, survivability and habitability.
