Why Software Architects Must Be Involved in the Earliest Systems Engineering Activities

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Suzanne Miller, Bill Nichols, Don Firesmith, and Mike Phillips contributed to this post.Today's major defense systems rely heavily on software-enabled capabilities. However, many defense programs acquiring new systems first determine the physical items to develop, assuming the contractors for those items will provide all needed software for the capability. But software by its nature spans physical items: it provides the inter-system communications that have a direct influence on most capabilities, and thus must be architected intelligently, especially when pieces are built by different contractors. If this architecture step is not done properly, a software-reliant project can be set up to fail from the first architectural decision.Example:The Global Positioning System (GPS)) was divided into ground, user, and satellite segments, and the government issued different contracts for each segment. Many interaction and schedule problems resulted, partly because the segments had different sch…