Model Driven Systems Development With Rational Products

Description

This IBM Redbooks publication describes the basic principles of the Rational Unified Process for Systems Engineering, which is IBM Rational's instantiation of model-driven systems development (MDSD).

MDSD consists of a set of transformations that progressively refine knowledge, requirements, and design of complex systems. MDSD begins with activities and artifacts meant to promote an understanding of the system's context.

Requirements problems often arise from a lack of understanding of context, which, in MDSD, means understanding the interaction of the system with entities external to it (actors), understanding the services required of the system, and understanding what gets exchanged between the system and its actors. Managing context explicitly means being aware of the shifts in context as you go from one model or decomposition level to the next.

MDSD suggests that a breadth-first collaboration based approach across multiple viewpoints is more effective than a traditional depth-first functional decomposition in creating an architecture that will not only meet requirements, but will prove to be more resilient in the face of inevitable change. MDSD also seeks to provide an effective distribution of responsibilities across resources. Joint realization and abstractions such as localities provide an effective and elegant way of accomplishing this.

Finally, the ability to attach attributes and values to modeling entities and the parametric capabilities of SysML provide a basis for doing simulations or other models to meet cost, risk, and other concerns.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Definitions, design points, and key concepts
Chapter 3. Black box thinking: Defining the system context
Chapter 4. White box thinking: Understanding collaboration
Chapter 5. Understanding distribution of responsibility
Chapter 6. Tool support for MDSD
Chapter 7. MDSD and SysML
Chapter 8. Conclusion

Appendix A. MDSD use case specification template
Appendix B. Additional material

About the Authors
Brian Nolan is a course developer for IBM Software Group, Rational Learning Solutions and Services, specializing in model-driven development. Prior to his current position, he was the regional practice lead for the Rational Unified Process for Systems Engineering. Dr. Nolan holds a Ph.D. degree in the classics from Ohio State University.

Barclay Brown is an executive consultant in the system engineering practice in IBM Global Business Services. Prior to this, he was the Worldwide Community of Practice leader for Rational Solution Architecture. He leads client engagements in aerospace and defense, system development, and IT enterprise architecture, helping clients transform their engineering organizations using IBM technologies, methods, and tools. Barclay has been a practitioner, consultant, and speaker on system engineering methods for over 8 years. His experience spans some 24 years in project management, system engineering, architectural modeling, and requirements analysis. His current specialization includes model-driven system development, enterprise architecture, estimation methods, and solution architecture. He is the designer of the model-driven system development course, offered by IBM. Barclay holds degrees in electrical engineering, psychology, and business.

Dr. Laurent Balmelli is a manager at IBM in charge of architecting the new generation of offerings and tools for systems engineering and product development. He has been a research staff member at T.J. Watson Research Center and IBM Tokyo Research Labs, and a member of several leadership councils in IBM since 2000. Since 2003, Dr. Balmelli has represented IBM within the SysML standard team and is one of the lead authors of the SysML language specification. He was recently awarded the position of invited professor at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, where he currently resides.

Tim Bohn is currently the Worldwide Community of Practice Leader for Solution Architecture. Tim has been active in the Systems community for many years, helping customers adopt MDSD in their practice. Tim has been with IBM Rational Software for 12 years, in both technical and management roles. Prior to joining Rational, Tim worked as a software engineer and systems engineer for 16 years. Tim holds a BS and MS degree from the University of Southern California, where he also guest lectures.