The Engineering Method or Process

The Systems Modeling Language is process agnostic and can be used with any method or process. This point is sometimes not understood by newcomers to the language who expect that it should be prescriptive and give clear guidelines as to what elements, diagram and models should be created and when. This agnostic position provides great flexibility and allows the language to be used in ways that are applicable to the process and the underlying problem or solution domain.

The elements, connectors, diagrams, and language definitions defined as part of the Systems Modeling language have all been created with the express purpose of allowing engineers to create models of the:

• mission
• stakeholders
• requirements
• measures of effectiveness
• structural and behavioral aspects of a system such as the components that ultimately implement the requirements

The process that is used by a team to create, manage and disseminate the Artifacts is completely arbitrary and must be defined at an organization or team level.

System Engineering typically requires a collaborative or multidisciplinary approach where teams work together to produce a result that meets the stakeholders' needs. There are two important aspects to any process:

• A management process - which governs stakeholders, risk, schedule, budget and quality
• A technical process - which manages architecture, analysis, design, integration and  testing

The two processes, however, clearly require touch points to ensure that the overall mission and the goals and objectives of the project are being met.

Enterprise Architect allows you to use any type of process regardless of whether it is formally defined, part of a standard or crafted in-house. There are also facilities within Enterprise Architect that allow you to define, publish and share a bespoke process.

A Well Supported Team

Enterprise Architect provides a large range of tools that will help teams collaborate regardless of where they are geographically located or how they are separated by time and distance. The product has been built as a collaborative platform from the ground up, allowing engineering and non-engineering, technical and non-technical stakeholders to work together in a collaborative and integrated structure.

The repository can be Cloud-based, and users can connect securely from anywhere on the globe, effectively creating a virtual team. This is important for a number of  projects where expertise is not available locally or where the project itself is global. The users and teams can use the collaboration features such as Discussions, Chats, Reviews and Model Mail to work together. The result will be collaborative architecture and design that is not the result of one engineer's work, but the output of many minds, and the work will be more than the sum of its parts.

These tools are effective because they can be used to annotate models, elements and diagrams, allowing users to work together as though they were working collaboratively on a whiteboard in the same room.

The Model Library is another handy collaboration tool that allows any type of file to be either included in the repository or listed with a hyperlink and/or URL reference to its external location on a web site. Documents such as standards, specifications, guidelines, guidance, examples, mentors and other material can all be catalogued in the Model Library.

There is a wide range of other tools that can be used to facilitate team work, including the Image Manager, Calendars, Publishing, Kanban, Project Management features and many more. This example shows a Kanban diagram that can be used to visualize what is being worked on in an Agile team developing physical or software components of a system. For more information see the The Modeling Team Help topic.