Systems, Man & Cybernetics - July 2017 - 10

In addition to many local chapter and regional activities, INCOSE hosts two annual international events per
year. The first is the International Workshop, which focuses on encouraging and promoting the activities of
INCOSE's technical Working Groups (WGs), the primary
engine behind the products released by INCOSE Technical
Operations (TechOps). The second annual event is the
International Symposium. This event is rich in content that
promotes new research and state-of-the-art practice in SE.
It also provides introductory content for those new to the
discipline. These events attract more than 1,000 attendees
from six continents each year.
INCOSE Strategic Objectives
In 2015, INCOSE established a set of strategic objectives to
guide a broad spectrum of priorities for investment in the
future of the organization, the membership, and the SE discipline. They highlight key measures of success for the
evolution of INCOSE and are consistent with the INCOSE
vision and mission. The following are the objectives:
◆ Growth: This objective is primarily about broadening
the SE practitioner base by reaching out to a more
diverse set of application domains, which includes
partnering with other industry associations, such as
the IEEE, and outreach activities that will grow a presence in other domains.
◆ Competency: Here, the aim is for INCOSE to team up
with industry, government, and academia to raise SE
competency. This has evolved into an INCOSE initiative to provide a full-spectrum, comprehensive SE professional development capability that includes
developing a competency framework, a professional
development portal, a self-assessment tool, a training
library, and the continued evolution of the INCOSE
Technical Leadership Institute.
◆ Alliances: With this objective, the intention is to amplify our ability to achieve our mission through diverse
alliances with other organizations. Effective change is
enhanced with industry-wide collaboration, cooperation, and consensus. The alliances are not just with
organizations focused on SE but also with those in
other areas that SE needs to integrate with, such as our
alliance with the Project Management Institute (PMI).
◆ Impactful products: This objective focuses on producing and brokering products and services with high
impact that are based on effective practice and
research. It includes enabling easier access to the
products, since they only provide value once they are
in the hands of the users and being applied. To help
promote access to products, INCOSE is establishing a
single warehouse of products, with easy navigation;
identifying "gold nuggets" (items of high value); and
establishing a strong public presence through its website, including an effective INCOSE storefront.
◆ Impactful forums: Here, the focus is on providing a
diverse set of forums with high impact that address SE
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IEEE SYSTEMS, MAN, & CYBERNETICS MAGAZINE Ju ly 2017

practice, policy, education, and research. This can
include more local forums; joint events with other
organizations, such as cosponsoring the System of SE
(SoSE) Conference annually with the IEEE Systems,
Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMCS) and others;
events that are focused on a specific topic; and, potentially, virtual events.
◆ Education: The objective here is to ensure that the
INCOSE curricular recommendations are widely adopted
around the world, raising the quality of engineering education. INCOSE has been and continues to take a strong
leadership role in influencing the direction and content of
both SE education and engineering education in general,
as well as SE educational research [e.g., the joint work of
INCOSE, the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE CS), and the
Computing Sciences Accreditation Board to shape the
cybersecurity curriculum] and support to various SE
Research Center projects, such as Helix.
◆ Transformation: The final objective intends to transform SE into a model-based discipline, which will help
systems engineers deal with increasing complexity,
trades, interrelationships, changes, and emergence, as
well as the ability to achieve higher levels of adaptability and scalability. Model-based SE (MBSE) has been
an INCOSE focus for several years as it has worked
collaboratively with others in the industry, such as the
Object Management Group (OMG).
Transforming SE Through Collaboration
TechOps is INCOSE's technical heart for its WGs and
technical initiatives. TechOps identifies the technical
initiatives that are strategically aligned with the
INCOSE vision and mission and will help evolve the
state of the art and practice of SE. The dedicated effort
of volunteer leaders and subject-matter experts has
made TechOps very productive and successful. INCOSE
depends on the coordinated efforts of dedicated volunteers and active collaboration with others to meet key
technical objectives.
INCOSE WGs address all aspects of SE and continue to
form new groups as the discipline evolves. These groups
focus on how to advance their area of focus while collaborating with other WGs for consistency in product development and agreement on best practices. These WGs also
collaborate with many external organizations to achieve
the INCOSE mission, including active partnerships with
the IEEE CS, the International Society for the Systems Sciences, and PMI, among others. The following outlines
some key activities in a subset of the WGs that are collaborating with other organizations to shape the future of SE.
Working to Transform SE Standards
Standards affect the systems we engineer. The complexity
of today's systems has increased the challenges organizations face in developing effective solutions for stakeholder
needs. Standards provide a common process framework

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Systems, Man & Cybernetics - July 2017