The company has for the past 12 years offered a comprehensive system engineering certificate program called "Grand Systems Development." This program can be consummated in a six or four course sequence as illustrated in the first two sequences of Figure 1. The course and tutorial description pages describe each individual training product. Additional sequences permit more emphasis on the application of system engineering to one of the four program focuses: requirements and specifications, synthesis (product design, material, and manufacturing), verification, or management). Currently, the only pre-defined emphasis offered is requirements and verification oriented. Sequence 3 is a requirements and verification emphasis while sequence 4 does the same with a combined requirements course rather than two separate ones while sequence 5 drops the management coverage included in sequences 3 and 4. All of the courses can be purchased independently as single three-day courses or one-day tutorials.

The program can be adapted to the specific needs of the client recognizing current strengths and weaknesses by selecting full three-day courses for some topics and one-day tutorials for others. Each course in the program is available as a three-day course or one-day tutorial. Clearly, the courses can include some workshop activity but the tutorials are essentially lecture oriented.

Each course is supplied with a comprehensive textbook, either a published work or a manuscript that is an expansion on a previously published book. The manuscripts are supplied as part of a student manual that also contains the presentation material and a set of related document templates, the latter in paper and/or CD ROM format. The requirements courses, subsequent to November 2005, when a new book will be published by Elsevier Publishing, will be supplied with a published textbook and separate student manual.

Program content has been applied to companies with very diverse product lines and military as well as commercial customer bases. Courses have been offered to companies developing weapons systems, yes, but also locomotives, farming equipment, construction equipment, auto mobile braking systems, medical laboratory equipment, and software. The lecturer for all courses is Jeffrey O. Grady (see the owner biography page), who has definite opinions about how the system engineering activities should be applied in the development of product systems but also recognizes that particular companies may have adopted alternative approaches that could also be valid within the context of their history, employees, management philosophy, customer base, and product line. The presentation of the material can be adjusted to reflect client preferences. Ideally, the client would expose their preferred practices to JOG System Engineering so that those adjustments could be made in a timely way prior to arrival at the training site.

The four-course program consists of one course for each of the four fundamental system engineering activities. Each of these courses is described under the Course Descriptions page. Click on the course of interest and it will take you to the related course description.

Each course is provided with a student manual containing a textbook, presentation materials, and a set of document templates. A student in a university class will receive the student manual materials from the university book store or by whatever other means the university distributes materials for courses. In the case of an on-site course contracted for by the company directly with JOG System Engineering,, the client will be supplied with a master from which they may reproduce the student manual components at no royalty fee. A public course hosted by JOG System Engineering will provide all of the materials as part of the fee. Courses offered by teaming partners will supply students with such parts of the materials as covered in their own advertising. 

The textbook for the requirements course will switch from Grand Systems Development, Volume 2 Grand Systems Requirements manuscript to a new book to be published by Elsevier Publishing in November 2005. Subsequent to November 2005, the other material will continue to be supplied as discussed above.

Division 2 content is partitioned into exhibits. Exhibits A through F (D through F not included in Volume 4) provide the information listed below. The student manuals supplied with the four course program include no Exhibits D through F as these relate only to six-course programs.

For information on the content of the templates included in exhibits G through N in the case of the management and requirements courses and a fewer number of exhibits in the other two cases, refer to the course descriptions. Some of the template exhibits include lettered appendices and students are encouraged to be watchful when searching for a particular document.

The six-course program replaces the combined requirements course with the requirements course pair, on focused on analysis and the other on management permitting more in depth coverage of the material and expanding workshop activity and adds the Specialty Engineering Methods and Models course right after the Grand Systems Synthesis course making the program  listed below.

This course has evolved from a general course in system engineering into the introductory course for the JOG System Engineering Grand Systems Development certificate program. It has also been offered through the UC Irvine System Engineering Certificate Program under the name Foundation of System Engineering, UC San Diego system engineering certificate program under the name System Engineering Management, and through University Consortium For Continuing Education (UCCE) under the name Introduction to System Engineering. The course provides a broad introduction to system development giving insights into the reasons why this process has evolved linked to human characteristics that have not changed in thousands of years and will likely be with us for a very long time into the future. A definition of systems and system engineering is included along with an introduction to several good standards that have evolved to guide organizations in accomplishing this work on programs.

The four fundamental system engineering techniques will be introduced and discussed to provide an overall understanding of the process and as preparation for further study of these techniques in other classes offered subsequently in this or other programs. The first of these four techniques is to define a problem as a precursor to solving it through design. Most engineers have been educated in engineering schools as great problem solvers but many have not discovered the wisdom of taking the time to first define the problem. This is done through requirements analysis placing the results in a specification. The second step is synthesis of those requirements, or design, during which system engineers, who are specialists in complexity and generalism, accomplish integration and optimization work at the system level across the boundary conditions respected by development teams. The step also includes procurement of needed material and developed products as well as manufacturing. The third step involves proving that the solution derived is a valid solution for the problem defined in the specification and is called verification. The forth element covered is the overarching technical management process supporting program management. The course features a workshop activity oriented toward a generic system development process that can be used as a template on any program and adjusted for the special needs of any enterprise. Where this is the first course in a certificate program, this data is subsequently applied to workshops in the remaining courses in the program.

This course is intended for practicing and prospective managers, engineers, and technical specialists who desire a broader understanding of the systems engineering process and its technical and management support tools. Students examine typical system life cycles and acquisition processes, engineering management planning, tools for technical program planning and control, activities within the systems engineering process, and elements and methods of specialty engineering integration. Topics include the impact of concurrent engineering/integrated product and process development and continuous process improvement on the practice of systems engineering in the enterprise.

The course template data is captured in exhibits supplied with the student manual in paper form or passed out to students as CD ROMs. The templates for this course are listed below: At some point in time in the future these will be downloadable from this web site. For a given course these are all coordinated with a particular hypothetical product system.

This course was derived from a one-quarter course taught first at the University of California, San Diego. In teaching this course for industry clients it was found that the discussion of the many models used was hurried and there was not enough time to complete an effective workshop so the course was partitioned into one focused on the requirements management aspect and this one focused on analysis. The course presents a general theory of structured analysis with comparisons of several effective models. Attention is drawn to model differences contrasting their richness in modeling the problem space versus the ease with which their diagrammatic artifacts can be taken into the human mind through vision.

The course covers several structured models for both performance (functional requirements) and design constraints (non-functional or quality requirements). This includes functional flow diagramming, IDEF-0, behavioral diagramming, enhanced functional flow diagramming, hierarchical functional analysis, state diagramming, and physical process analysis models that are effective for systems and hardware entities. Design constraints modeling offered includes the use of schematic block and n-square diagrams for interface identification, a three tiered environmental requirements model (system, end item, and component levels), and a specialty engineering assignment matrix.

Models appealing to the three computer software modeling orientations (process, data, and object) are covered. The computer processing approaches covered include flow charting, modern structured analysis (Yourdon-DeMarco and the Hatley-Pirbhai extension), early object oriented models pointing out a serious flaw, and unified modeling language (UML) that corrected the flaw. The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DOD AF) is also introduced.

A new RAS-Complete is offered as a way to capture all of the requirements derived from specific models and allocated to specific product entities. Capture of the requirements analysis sheet (RAS) in a computer database is encouraged. The RAS-Complete is discussed in several different forms: tabular, process linked, and a three-dimensional set-theoretic geometrical display. It is used also to coordinate templates selected for the program, functional departments that must provide personnel to accomplish the work on a program, and the analytical models preferred for gaining insight into the paragraph needs expressed in the template. The RAS-Complete concept can accept inputs from system, hardware, and software requirements analysis processes.

A manuscript titled Grand Systems Development, Volume 2, Grand Systems Requirements, is being used up until November 2005.

Jeff Grady's new book titled System Requirements Analysis was published by Academic Press (Elsevier) in January 2006. It is a comprehensive update and expansion of his earlier book by the same titled published by McGraw-Hill in 1993. The book is described on this web site under the books section. It is available from http://www.amazon.com.

The content was originally based on practices prepared for General Dynamics Space Systems Division where Mr. Grady was the Manager of Systems Development at the time. The Version 10.0 manuscript and the published book cover both the analysis and management aspects of the work. It includes models for software development as well as systems and hardware entities. The manuscript will be replaced in November 2005 by a new requirements book published by Elsevier Publishing described under books and papers on this web site.

The course template data is captured in exhibits supplied with the student manual in paper form or passed out to students as CD ROMs. The templates for this course are listed below: At some time in the future these will be downloadable from this web site.

This course, like the analysis course, was split from the general course, Grand Systems Requirements, to provide more thorough coverage and offer extended workshop opportunities. After the introduction, the course discusses how to prepare a program for structured analysis and how to capture the results of structured analysis work in a form that can be configuration managed. Specification and ICD development techniques are covered in lecture and workshop sessions. The need for tailoring based on the general nature of standards and the specific nature of specific systems undergoing development is discussed. Considerable attention is paid to requirements risk in the form of validation, budgets and margins, traceability, and technical performance measurement (TPM). Verification traceability is introduced. The use of computer applications is encouraged.

A manuscript titled Grand Systems Development, Volume 2, Grand Systems Requirements, is being used up until November 2005.

Jeff Grady's new book titled System Requirements Analysis was published by Academic Press (Elsevier) in January 2006. It is a comprehensive update and expansion of his earlier book by the same titled published by McGraw-Hill in 1993. The book is described on this web site under the books section. It is available from http://www.amazon.com.

It was originally written as text material for the first class in the University of California, San Diego class in requirements analysis first offered in 1990. The content was originally based on practices prepared for General Dynamics Space Systems Division where Mr. Grady was the Manager of Systems Development at the time. The Version 10.0 manuscript and the published book covers both the analysis and management aspects of the work..

The course template data is captured in exhibits supplied with the student manual in paper form or passed out to students as CD ROMs. The only template for this course is listed below: At some time in the future this will be downloadable from this web site.

This course was originally created for a university system engineering certificate program presented as a 30 hour quarter length course or a three-day short course format. It was originally based on the lecturer’s book titled System Integration but has evolved into a broader view of the synthesis process embracing procurement, material processing, and manufacturing as well as the product design process. Synthesis is a three step process for translating approved requirements into a design solution, procurement action to acquire the needed materials and in-house processing of those materials, and manufacturing to create and deliver the final product.

The systems approach consists of three fundamental steps: define the problem (in specifications), solve the problem through creative design, and prove that the design solves the problem. This course deals with the second step. Design is not a system engineering activity, rather a creative engineering activity but it should take place within an organized environment or infrastructure crafted by program management, team leaders, and system engineering personnel. The principal course focus is on the integration and optimization work that must accompany the design work. In addition, several of the engineering design and analysis domain fields are discussed and how people from those fields can contribute to the development process.

Integration is needed because we must decompose complex problems into collections of smaller problems as part of the development process and because the problems must be solved by collections of specialists. The cross-functional team approach is encouraged with the teams coordinated with the product system architecture. At every level of indenture in this team structure, including the system level, integration agents are needed to work across the team (product) and specialized knowledge boundaries.

Initially the course text was the lecturer's CRC Press book System Integration, but currently it is an expanded manuscript titled Grand Systems Development Volume 3 Grand Systems Synthesis. The latter covers the whole synthesis range (design, procurement and material processing,, and manufacturing) including more extensive coverage of the specialty engineering disciplines such that the book may be used in the specialty engineering course as well.

This course covers the third process in the development sequence covered in the JOG System Engineering Systems Development certificate program: define the problem, solve the problem, prove that the design satisfies the requirements. There are several ways to accomplish development work but if done in any other sequence, the results are likely to be unsatisfactory. All verification work is a comparison process where we compare an object being verified against some standard of excellence. The standard for all three verification processes (system test and evaluation, item qualification, and item acceptance) is a set of specifications that the course pairs up.

Verification is a management process through which we produce, evaluate, and retain evidence of the condition of design compliance with the corresponding requirements, develop and implement planning for the related processes from which evidence is extracted, and culminating in functional configuration and physical configuration audits.. This whole sweep is covered in the course beginning with the writing of the specifications to include verification methods and requirements for each product requirement. The verification planning process is discussed as a transform from the requirements into a set of verification tasks, each one of which will produce evidence about the condition of compliance of the design relative to the requirements mapped to that task. The union of all of the evidence from all of the tasks corresponding to any particular item in the system must then be evaluated or audited to determine to what extent the design satisfies the content of its specification.

All verification work is partitioned into three processes each one of which is coordinated with a particular kind of specification. Item qualification is driven by the content of the item performance specifications. Item acceptance is driven by the content of the item detail specifications. System test and evaluation is driven by the content of the content of the system specification. The not uncommon approach of using the design as  the basis for qualification is noted and discouraged in the course.

This course is based on a one-quarter course taught at the University of California, San Diego for the past 12 years as a part of their system engineering certificate program. The full course covers structured models for both performance (functional requirements) and design constraints (non-functional or quality requirements). It can be focused on grand systems (generic problem set in combination with the enterprise vision or mission), hardware entities, or software entities as a function of the program needs. A very simple progressive method is offered for writing requirements and that is fit into one of several structured models covering each kind of requirement that a specification customarily must contain. Traceability, verification, applicable documents analysis, margins and budgets, specification practices, technical performance measurement, and requirements integration are all covered in the full course. Several hardware and software decomposition models are presented and the utility of computer requirements tools and models addressed. The concurrent engineering team approach is stressed using the V, waterfall,  spiral, or N sequence model.

The course presents new ideas in requirements analysis such as the N development model and a comprehensive HW/SW, product/process, development/product requirements taxonomy developed since the lecturer’s earlier book was published and an extension into computer software requirements analysis, including the three principal software modeling techniques (process, data, and object orientations) not included in the original book. An attempt is made to unify all of these models through a general theory of structured analysis also new since the original book was published. A RAS-Complete concept is also new. This course covers both areas included in the two courses that were expanded from it, one dealing with analysis and the other dealing with documentation and management.

This course is used in the four-course certificate program and as an independent course where the client cannot afford the time personnel must be away from the job required for the two requirements courses.

Jeff Grady's new book titled System Requirements Analysis was published by Academic Press (Elsevier) in January 2006. It is a comprehensive update and expansion of his earlier book by the same titled published by McGraw-Hill in 1993. The book is described on this web site under the books section. It is available from http://www.amazon.com.

The company has offered other three-day courses in the past and is from time to time asked by clients to develop other specific courses that then become available for presentation to other clients, never, of course, with any client-specific data included. At one time the company presented an integration and verification course because it was believed that neither topic could fill a three-day period. That concern was discarded very early, however, and the two courses evolved independently. A course titled System Engineering Deployment was offered at the time the owner's book by that title was published but subsequently, this content was merged into the Grand Systems Management course.

As covered on another page of this web site, the company stands ready to build a client-specific course not currently available. Where the course can subsequently be presented to other clients, there is generally no charge for the development work. Where a course is developed for a particular client that takes delivery and ownership of the course, there is a consulting fee charged.

All of the three-day courses described elsewhere in this web site are available in the form of a one-day tutorial. The first six listed below cover the six course certificate  while tutorials 211,27,24, and 26 cover the four-course certificate program and form the special four-day ATI course. Many of the other tutorials were developed for presentation at the annual INCOSE Symposium or for INCOSE chapters. Other tutorials can be developed to satisfy client needs. Generally, there is no cost for development  if there is a possibility that the tutorial could have a more general appeal.

Workshops offering student activity in team or individual efforts to product specific work products are available on many topics and can be fashioned to cover any system engineering topic in which the client wishes to improve the performance of its work force. The value of this activity is amplified when the client provides the template or format for the work product to be produced.

 NEW WINTER ON-CAMPUS UCSD REQUIREMENTS COURSE

During the Winter quarter 2009, Jeff will present a new Universal Architecture Description Framework course that will cover all active requirements modeling methods and show how one can combine a subset of them to form a truly comprehensive model from which all requirements populating a set of program specifications may be derived no matter the intended method of implementation (hardware, software, or humans following procedures). The course will be presented on campus at UCSD as a one-quarter length course stretching from January through March in nine class meetings of three hours each once a week.Contact UCSD Extension (http://www.ucsd.extension.edu) to sign up.

 APPLIED TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE COURSES

ATI will offer the JOG System Engineering Total Systems Engineering and Development course in the following venues in 2008: February 2-5, 2009 in Beltsville, MD and March 3-6, 2009 in Colorado Springs, Colorado This course provides coverage of the complete system development life cycle featuring one day on each of the four fundamental system engineering areas of interest: requirements, synthesis (design, material, and manufacturing), verification, and management. This is essentially the JOG System Engineering four-course certificate program in four days. In quarter length courses it requires 12 days in the accelerated format. Other than the Johns Hopkins course, these courses are offered in a hotel in the indicated cities. ATI will offer the JOG System Engineering course System Engineering - Requirements course in the following venues in early 2009: February 2-5, 2009 in Albuquerque, NM and March 3-6, 2009 in Columbia, MD. Please contact ATI at http://www.aticourses.com or via telephone at (888) 501-2100 or (410) 956-8805 for more information.

JOG System Engineering will develop one or more courses for ownership by the client. These courses will encourage use of the client’s preferred processes and methods. The client may mix course from JOG System Engineering with others that they develop themselves. The cost is a function of the number of JOG System Engineering charts used (royalty issue), the number of client owned charts used (no development cost), and the man-hours required for development and integration of the final product. Commonly, JOG System Engineering pilots the course attended by potential instructors from the client.

ATI, based in Clarksville, Maryland, is operated by Mr. James Jenkins. ATI has for many years offered a wide range of courses applicable to defense, space, and commercial industry. These are hard core engineering courses presented by gifted professionals with years of experience in doing the work and/or managing it. JOG System Engineering offers a general system engineering program that is not characterized by depth in any particular engineering domain, rather techniques that can be applied by system engineers as well as engineers from any engineering domain. JOG System Engineering has teamed up with ATI to offer ATI clients its system engineering program in a couple of different forms but also to draw upon the strength of ATI in domain specific areas for clients that want their system engineering program flavored for a particular domain.

A client of ATI may sign up for any JOG System Engineering course through ATI as well as a four or six course certificate program. ATI also offers a special four-day Systems Engineering Management and Development course that links four JOG System Engineering tutorials together to provide the equivalent of sequence 2 of Figure 1 composed of tutorials. Figure 2 illustrates another program available through either JOG System Engineering or ATI. It combines the four-course certificate program with two electives supplied by ATI in a domain of interest to the client. Click on the ATI block to visit the ATI web (http://www.ATIcourses.com) site to discover what courses are available.

PEI, based in Encino, CA, is operated by Mr. Tom Mincer. JOG System Engineering has teamed with PEI to offer PEI clients its four-course program as well as provide single courses for use in other system engineering programs offered by PEI. JOG System Engineering also offers a pair of special courses for PEI that permit one to complete a four-course certificate program in two work weeks (ten days). This program consists of a requirements and verification course that is normally six days in length but is trimmed of eight hours so it can be completed in five days. The second course focuses on enterprise, program, and product synthesis and is a combination of the JOG System Engineering courses Grand Systems Synthesis and Grand Systems Management with eight hours trimmed. In both cases some of the trimmed eight hours come from built in redundancy and the rest by trimming workshop activities to some extent. Essentially, four hours is trimmed form each of the two JOG System Engineering courses that comprise each PEI course.

Table 1 offers the outline for the PEI synthesis course with hours noted for the PEI course referenced to the comparable JOG System Engineering course. The first half of the PEI course coordinates with the JOG System Engineering course titled Grand Systems Management and the last half with the course Grand Systems Synthesis. The periods trimmed are noted by not having a PEI equivalent.

Consulting services should be purchased based on an expectation that one of the outcomes of the service is a termination of any further need for that service from an external source. The owner, while a manager in industry, found it disappointing that the work of a consultant never seemed to terminate. JOG System Engineering, Inc. applies a closed loop consulting technique, illustrated in Figure 4, that encourages identification of areas needing improvement coupled with closure on an effective corrective action plan that may involve development, improvement, or adoption of a standard practice, selection of effective system engineering tools, and/or training of personnel.

The enterprise should thereafter be essentially self sufficient in the specific related system engineering area(s) as a result of successful completion of the action plan. The long term training and education aspects of the action plan may entail continuing in-house training by company personnel, possibly based on materials included in JOG System Engineering, Inc. courses, or through a connection established with a local educational institution.

JOG System Engineering, Inc. maintains that a company should embrace a singe process definition defined in continually improved written practices. Several of the courses listed in this catalog tell how to do this for system engineering and provide insights into extending this capability into seamless program planning techniques for system engineering and other disciplines as well.

  PROCESS ASSESSMENT AND IMPROVEMENT

JOG System Engineering, Inc. will provide instruction in any course the client requests and will develop any special course needed to satisfy particular requirements but encourages selection of on-site courses indicated by the results of an assessment of one's current system engineering capability. There are any number of assessment models available including one offered by JOG System Engineering, Inc. A one-day version of this assessment service is offered at no cost and with no obligation within a 200 mile radius of San Diego, California. This one-day service is available beyond that distance for, at most, the cost of travel and expenses, and depending on circumstances for no expense cost either. This free day can be applied to any purpose the enterprise desires including receiving a half-day tutorial.

Where the client is interested in a specific assessment methodology, we either steer the client to a firm that is renowned in that field or make arrangements for associate support of the client depending on the client’s wishes and the specific situation.

Once a course of action is agreed upon to correct identified shortfalls,  JOG System Engineering may be able to provide the support needed to correct the observed problem. It is possible that the enterprise will need no outside help to implement the needed improvements.

NEAR TERM WORK

The owner is ready to help you personally on a temporary basis to implement on-site any of the content of this catalog based on 30 years of industry experience as a system engineer and engineering manager, years of training experience in this field, and the research that has gone into six published books in the field, or bring in qualified associates to do so. Specific tasks that we can help you with include: