SYSE.15:1 - Problem Frame

Systems Engineering is not one Method. Engineering different Systems—for example, a software-intensive controller, ship, building, electrical installation, medical device, or experimental machine—can require different physical models, trials, specialist evidence, permissions, platforms, and release Methods. Useful Methods can be shared across those applications, but domain phenomena and consequences change how some Methods are performed and checked.

An Agent that is also the actual System designated as project system-of-interest may enact an operating Method. For a System that does not yet exist, state the expected operating Method against its intended-system designator. The project also uses engineering Methods to obtain results such as an account of intended use, a design, a created or changed System, an integration observation, an assurance result, or a release decision. An operating Method enacted by the System and an engineering Method used to create or change that System answer different questions, even when one project must understand both. A non-agentic System has behaviour and functions but performs no Method.

Methods can stand in several relations at once. A trial Method can belong to several Method kinds, participate in several whole Methods, supply results to several decisions, and be enacted concurrently with modeling or implementation Work. Distinguish these relations when selecting or combining Methods.