Subsystems Integrator

Subsystems Integrator a.k.a The Systems Engineer

Marine Science Subsystems Integrator

Core Competency

• Create Direction, Alignment and Commitment
• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Excels at decision-making
• Primary consultant to Leadership and Planning
• Recommends Conflict resolution
• Engages in negotiation
• High Degree of Adaptability
• Stress Tolerant

Goals

Integration Design, Build, and Test Plan

• The Project Management(PM) and Systems integrator (SI) are responsible for planning, managing, and executing the Integration process.
• Projects that develop an integration plan have a high degree of success.
• The plan defines the stages of integration, during which system elements are successively integrated to form higher level elements, and eventually the finished RobotX platform.
• The integration plan includes descriptions of the required teams, test standards, testing methods, and integration schedule.

Technical Assessment responsibilities

• Establish event-driven technical planning
• Identify Test measures and Metrics assessing design success
• Identify performance measures and Metrics assessing technical progress
• Determine risk and develop mitigation strategies
• Propose changes in the technical approach to address risk mitigation
• Continually measure technical readiness of the RobotX platform

Integrated Test Plan

• includes design baseline evaluation
  1. identifying critical design parameters
  2. setting performance threshholds
• individual Subsystems test plans
  1. interface tests
  2. functional tests
  3. effectiveness tests
• platform performance test plan
  1. MOE (measures of effectiveness)
     • maximum time on range without operation intervention
     • hardware operational goal accomplishment
     • AI operational goal accomplishment
  2. MOF (measures of functionality)
     • subsystems Interoperability
     • mean time between Interoperability failure

Primary Management Roles and Responsibilities

Requirements Management

Requirements are the foundation of the project and requirements management process helps ensure delivery of capability that meets intended mission performance objectives.
Performance objectives are identified in operational terms at the system level during implementation of the Requirements Definition and Requirements Analysis processes.
The Subsystems Integrator has these Requirements Management responsibilities:

• maintain a current and approved set of Requirements
• thoughtful analysis and management of Requirements insuring for subsystem integration and system performance
• synchronization with the program’s Configuration Management process to mitigate unintended consequences due to project change
• rigorous documentation of changes to the system performance specification

Process Responsibilities

• tracks Requirements changes and maintains traceability of the system performance specification and capabilities
• traces the high-level Requirements down to the system elements through the lowest level of the design as the system design evolves to lower levels of detail
• establishes and maintains a Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM)
  1. capturing all Requirements in the system performance specification
  2. documenting their decomposition/derivation and allocation history
  3. document rationale for all entries and changes
• work with Project Management Team to track cost, schedule, and performance impacts associated with Requirements changes

Risk Management

• prioritize identified technical risks and developing mitigation actions
• provide risk mitigation plan to PM for review and approval

Risk Management focal points

Activity	Intent Is to Answer the Question
Risk Identification	What can go wrong? What is the future root cause?
Risk Analysis	How big is the risk? What is the probability of occurrence? What is the consequence of occurrence?
Risk Mitigation	What is the approach for addressing a potential unfavorable consequence? How can the planned risk mitigation be implemented? How do we ensure that successful risk mitigation occurs?
Risk Monitoring	How are risk management plans going?

Configuration Management

Configuration management is the means by which the results of the systems engineering effort are documented and tracked as changes occur.

Configuration Management process

• has a formal document and plan to guide the Configuration Management
• allows technical insight into all levels of the system design
• principal methodology for establishing and maintaining consistency of subsystem’s attributes
  • design
  • functional
  • performance
  • physical
• consists of interrelated functions that maintain consistency between project configuration information

1. Responsibilities and Resources
2. Administrative meeting guidelines including a definition of procedures and tools
3. Baselining processes
4. Configuration control and Configuration status accounting
5. Naming conventions
6. Audits and Reviews
7. Configuration Identification
8. Configuration Change Management
9. Configuration Status Accounting

Interface Management

• careful interface documentation ensures proper function and interoperability
• ensures that all the development teams document all internal and external interface requirements
• documents Requirements changes in accordance with the Configuration Management Plan
• communicates interface information to team counterparts responsible for affected systems and system elements
• drives coherent testing to verify expected performance and eventually operational performance
• an iterative process
• as knowledge of the system and system elements becomes more defined during design activities, verifiable lower-level requirements and interfaces are defined and refined
• consider impacts of the originally defined capabilities and interfaces, and the overall system when defining and modifying interfaces