Lessons learned from the front lines of the aerospace industry - balancing complexity and risk

The demand for C4I services to support interagency coordination and cooperation is growing at all levels of government. In meeting this growing need, we face challenges in interoperability, complexity, unity of effort, and affordability. To compound the effort, our operating environment is characterized by significant annual growth in information, communications, and computing capabilities. The challenge of providing the right balance of C4I services to a complex set of customers is immense and potentially very costly. System engineers and system architects must play a fundamental role in: (1) understanding and reducing the complexity of systems operation with the end user in mind, (2) enabling the integration of multiple, complex systems to maximize interoperability, (3) identifying risks and developing sound mitigation plans for systems integration, (4) identifying risks and developing sound mitigation plans for new systems development, (5) conducting analysis for service solutions that may not involve system development.