Supporting Systems Engineering Activities by Artifact-Oriented Description and Selection of Methods

Systems Engineering (SE) is becoming increasingly relevant in industrial application since more stakeholders are involved in engineering activities. To implement SE, companies have to adapt existing engineering processes and methods. This adaption requires knowledge about new methods as well as their integration into the engineering activities. In order to ensure goal-oriented identification of methods for different SE activities in this contribution an action field profile and the Systems Engineering Method Matrix are proposed. The development of both tools is driven by the assumption that most SE activities and methods can be described based on the artefacts the deliver. In order to get feedback about the proposed tools, semi-structured interviews with two industry partners were conducted, focussing on the tool's usability. These interviews underline the basic usability of the tools and their support to identify SE activities to be supported by (new) methods. Moreover, requirements for further development and adaption are derived from the interviews.