The Systems Engineering DevOps Lemniscate and Model-Based System Operations

Systems engineering is defined as a “full life cycle” discipline and provides methodologies and processes to support the design, development, verification, sustainment, and disposal of systems. While this cradle-to-grave concept is well documented throughout literature, there has been recent emphasis on evolving and digitally transforming systems engineering methodologies, practices, and tools for the latter phases of system life cycles. This article adapts principles from the software engineering domain DevOps concept (a collaborative merger of system development and operations) into a Systems Engineering DevOps (SEDevOps) life cycle model. This facilitates a merger of systems engineering processes, tools, and products into a surrogate operational environment in which the sustainment of a system is tied closely to the curation of a system model expanded to include the enabling system elements necessary for operations and sustainment (procedures, scripts, etc.). This progression of the systems engineering mindset, focused on digitally transforming and enhancing system operations and sustainment, improves agility in later life cycle phases. A framework for applying SEDevOps is introduced as a new systems modeling language profile. A use-case leveraging this “model-based system operations” framework, shows how merging support elements into a spacecraft system model improves adaptability during operations, exemplifying elements of a DevOps approach to cyber-physical system sustainment.