INCOSE WMA Newsletter

March 2010
Upcoming Events
Presidents Word
At the last monthly WMA Chapter meeting, we
began a series of experiments in response to the
survey we took last year. In the survey, we found April
out that most members did not participate in more
than a few meeting a year. Therefore, we have April 13th: Monthly Meeting @ Brio
begun trying different venues, topics, themes, etc.
Join Dr. Paul Montgomery for a presentation
to help increase membership attendance. In the on Why Great Architectures Fail and Adequate
March meeting we had our first attempt to hold Architectures Succeed
the session at a restaurant in the Tyson Corners
area (one of the two areas of greatest 6:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m. @ the Brio Tuscan Grille
Banquet Room, 7854L Tysons Corner Center
concentration the others being
McLean, VA.
Reston/Herdon/Chantilly). The Brio trial gained
high marks for the food and social networking April 21st: Weekday Tutorial @ Brio
opportunities. However, the restaurant had made
a mistake and double-booked their banquet room
Join Dr. Steven H. Dam for a tutorial on Building
by accident something we didnt find out about
Your Concept of Operations (CONOPS)
until the day before. As such, the speaker, Jim
Armstrong, did his best, but you had to be close to 11:30 a.m. 4:30 p.m. @ the Brio Tuscan Grille
Banquet Room, 7854L Tysons Corner Center
him to hear. I hope Jims throat has recovered by McLean, VA.
now. We have resolved the problem for Aprils
meeting by having the session in the banquet room
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
and using a portable speaker system to improve
the sound quality. Hopefully that will give us a 1 Presidents Word

better data point on the use of non-corporate 1 Upcoming Events

facilities. Please come and try this out. In addition, 2 Bringing along the NextGen INCOSE SE
we are trying something different with the
3 INCOSE TechOps
upcoming tutorial. We are holding it on a weekday
4 Welcome to the new INCOSE Ambassador
and making it shorter.
4 Call for Presentations and Tutorials
Lunch at Brio is included in the price. We hope

continued on page 2

people can take time out of their busy schedule
and join us for a topic of current interest Building
Concepts of Operations (CONOPS). Please feel free
to invite friends and customers to attend. At the
end of every meeting and tutorial, we are asking
for feedback. We are compiling that feedback and
presenting it at the board of directors meeting to
see where to go next in this quest to improve
attendance at the sessions. Please continue to
participate in the surveys and sessions. Were
looking forward to making WMA not only the
largest INCOSE chapter, but also the best.
Sincerely,
Steven H. Dam
INCOSE WMA President
Bringing along the NextGen INCOSE
Systems Engineers
Author: L. Nasta, INCOSE-WMA Director
On 2 March 2010, INCOSE-WMA director Laurie
Nasta attended the George Mason University
INCOSE Student Chapter meeting to deliver a
brief on the INCOSE Systems Engineering
Certification Program. Despite mid-terms being
scheduled for the next day, a rain-snow mix
falling, and short advertising notice, the chapter
managed to have a really good turnout of about
20+ students, and their faculty adviser, Ms.
Kathryn Laskey (Associate Professor, Systems
Engineering and Operations Research [SEOR]).
Ms. Nasta presented the standard INCOSE
certification deck, focusing heavily
on the Associate Systems Engineering
Professional (ASEP) certification as
being the most appropriate for the graduating
Undergraduate or Masters student candidate.
She advised them how to best position
2
themselves for taking the CSEP five years later,
noting how important it was to get a mix of
experience in multiple SE domain areas not just
lock themselves into one special area. She
noted the importance of:
staying in touch with leaders who could be
qualified references for their CSEP
applications;
that experienced professionals within her
own firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, had
noted the difficulty involved in going back
to track down managers from former jobs;
and that if they had known how important
keeping in touch was for
supporting the CSEP application process
they would have done better
She spent time discussing the different domains
with Systems Engineering that INCOSE tests on.
This was an interesting discussion because both
sides learned that the GMU curriculum probably is
deficient in some areas, like Quality Assurance,
and Logistics and other Speciality Engineering
domains like System Safety.
She also covered the newest certification -
the CSEP-Acquisition - which is still growing for
those in the group who might be interested
in the DOD environment or being Acquisition
Engineers or Program Managers. This was a very
new topic for most of the crowd who were mostly
unfamiliar with the Defense Acquisition University
(DAU) and the DAWIA certification for government
managers.
She encouraged all the attendees to be active
in the WMA chapter as a stepping stone for future
employment, and to remain involved to support
acquisition of Professional Development Units
(PDUs) needed to sustain any SE certification.
 3

INCOSE Technical Operations (TechOps) o Net-centric Operations

o Systems Engineering in the Commercial
World
Author: Kenneth M. Zemrowski, INCOSE Assistant Director
o Very Small Small & Medium Enterprises
for Standards
Academia
o Accreditation
People who join professional associations are attracted for o Motor Sports
several reasons, including chapter activities, publications, o SE Graduate Curriculum
symposia, and special interest groups. In the case of Government
INCOSE, the last three areas are supported directly by o Anti-terrorism International
Technical Operations, which provides technical information o Defense Systems
by means of technical events, technical products, technical o Global Earth Observation System of
interactions among stakeholders, and technical information Systems (GEOSS)
repositories. o Intelligent Transport & Transit Systems
o Power and Energy Systems
Many of INCOSEs 37 working groups met in February 2010 o Space Systems
in Mesa, Arizona, at the INCOSE International Workshop.
These WGs, which are generally domain specific (e.g., One might wonder why Motor Sports is within Academia.
Industry, academia, government) are chartered to develop The focus is not on the varied systems engineering
specific INCOSE products and help advance systems practices embodied in motor sports, but on the outreach
engineering knowledge. The WGs are organized into eight potential for introducing systems engineering to students
areas, with an assistant director for each:
by using a popular recreational activity.

Knowledge Besides the working groups, there are two INCOSE

o Architecture
initiatives: Model Based Systems Engineering and
o Complex Systems Standards. Although INCOSE does not develop its own
o Intelligent Enterprises
standards, we have established liaisons with a number of
o Knowledge Management
international standards organizations.
o Process Improvement
o Research
o Resilient Systems In future articles, I will briefly describe the activities of each
set of working groups as well as the two initiative areas. I
Processes
will also describe the TechOps role in producing INCOSE
o Cost Engineering
Insight and organizing events such as the International
o Human Systems Integration
o In-Service Systems Symposium.
o Lean Systems Engineering
o Life Cycle Management Additional information about TechOps, including an
o Measurement organization chart, is available on the INCOSE public web
o Requirements site at: http://www.incose.org/about/organization/ti.aspx.
o Risk Management Through INCOSE Connect
o System Safety Integration (https://connect.incose.org/default.aspx), INCOSE
o Systems Security Engineering members have access to SharePoint pages for each of the
o Verification & Validation working groups and information on our standards
Technology activities.
o Autonomous System Test & Validation
o Model-driven System Design
o Tools Database
o Tools Integration & Interoperability
Industry Ken Zemrowski. For more
information on Ken, continue
o Biomedical to page 4.
o Information Systems
o Infrastructure

Welcome to the new INCOSE Tech Ops
Ambassador
Please welcome Ken Zemrowski as the new
INCOSE WMA Chapter Ambassador to INCOSE
Technical Operations! In his new role, Ken will be
helping connect the chapter to whats going on in
INCOSE Tech Ops.
Ken Zemrowski serves as Assistant Director for
Standards Initiatives, responsible for coordinating
INCOSE's liaison activities with various
organizations that produce systems engineering
standards. Ken's standards experience includes
representing the Institute for Certification of
Computing Professionals (ICCP) on the Executive
Board of the International Committee for
Information Technology Standards (INCITS,
where he also chaired the INCITS Policy and
Procedures Committee; INCITS develops the USA
positions on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1
- Information Technology standards). He has
also participated in development of aeronautical
standards with the International Civil Aviation
Organization and RTCA (formerly Radio Technical
Commission for Aeronautics) and is a member of
the IEEE Standards Association.
Ken is employed by TASC, Inc., where he is Chief
Engineer for FAA Automation Technical
Assistance Contract (TAC2) project, providing
technical leadership for support of modernization
of the FAAs national airspace system. He directly
supports strategic planning and systems
engineering for transformation to a system
capable of handling triple the airspace capacity of
today by 2025. Ken also serves as a TASC
Technical Fellow.
Ken is a CSEP with the Acquisition extension.
For more information on INCOSE WMA, please visit www.incose-wma.org
4
Call for Presentations and Tutorials
WMA INCOSE 2010
The Washington Metropolitan Area (WMA) Chapter of the
International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) is
your local source for systems engineering. The chapter has
a mission to provide relevance in a venue where engineers
can share topics of current information and network..
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
Service Oriented Architectures
Architecture Frameworks
Cloud Computing and its impact on systems
engineering and modeling
Model-Based Systems Engineering
New tools and methodologies for systems
engineering
Etc.
Presentation opportunities are available during meetings
and at semi-monthly tutorials. At the monthly meetings the
chapter seeks short papers (20-40 minutes).. Tutorials can
be either day or full day events, with a short (5-15 minute)
summary presented at the monthly meeting prior to
tutorial.
The submitted papers will be evaluated by at least 2
members of the WMA Chapter review team based on the
following criteria:
1) Content advances the knowledge-base for, or the
practice of, systems engineering (this is the most
important criterion, focusing on usability)
2) Content is substantive
3) Content is logical
4) Content assertions are backed by supporting data
5) Content is effectively conveyed and key concepts
are integrated
Presented papers will be posted on the INCOSE WMA web
site. If you are interested to present at a meeting or can
recommend a speaker, please contact the program chair,
Karin Harm-Ottman for more information.