User Tools

Site Tools


mbse:ecosystems

Digital Ecosystems Challenge Team -- DECO

Purpose

The INCOSE Digital Ecosystems Challenge Team collaborates on pre-competitive capabilities that help organizations better define and manage their digital ecosystems using model-based technology. Originally we were called the “MBX Ecosystems” Challenge Team since MBX ecosystems are an important subclass of digital ecosystems.

In simple terms, your digital ecosystem consist of the models, tools, processes, and people/roles that come together to develop the systems/products your organization cares about.

But a digital ecosystem (DECO) can be broader than that, depending on the scope you are concerned about. For example some organizations utilize their digital ecosystems to also support the operation of their systems/products. And some organizations include cross-project libraries and methods in their digital ecosystems, as well as interconnections with external digital ecosystems across their supply chain.

To date digital ecosystems are typically implicit systems that are documented and managed (if at all) using various ad-hoc, disconnected, and silo'ed techniques. Our challenge team targets to improve the situation by helping model-based approaches become standard practice for digital ecosystems.

If these digital ecosystem topics are of interest to you, come and join us to help move things forward!

Context and Status

This is a relatively new Challenge Team within the INCOSE MBSE Initiative, and our wiki is evolving. We held our first official “MBX Ecosystems” track as a mini-workshop within IW19 (Jan 2019). The subsections below provide pointers to our corresponding INCOSE-based meetings to date, our collaborations with other groups beyond INCOSE, and our MBX/digital name history and context.

INCOSE DECO Challenge Team Leads

Challenge Team Lead / POC: Russell Peak (Georgia Tech)
Co-Leads: Bjorn Cole (Lockheed Martin), Chris Delp (JPL), Brittany Friedland (Boeing)
(as of Jan 2020)

INCOSE DECO Challenge Team Meetings

Traditionally we have had just one official INCOSE-based team meeting each year as a mini-workshop within the larger INCOSE International Workshop event (IWxx). In the future we may organize other INCOSE-based meetings (perhaps at an International Symposium (ISxx) event at some point). Here are the pages for our main INCOSE-based meetings to date:

IW = INCOSE International Workshop
IS = INCOSE International Symposium

INCOSE DECO Challenge Team Webcons

We currently do not hold a separate webcon specific to our INCOSE DECO Challenge Team. Instead, we join other in-person meetings and webcons highlighted in the next subsection below. We hold INCOSE DECO Challenge Team-specific discussions during those meetings/webcons on an as-needed basis.

Other Meetings, Webcons, and Collaborations

We collaborate closely with the following groups and periodically hold joint meetings at their in-person events:

  • OpenMBEE community – a NumFOCUS-based group (www.openmbee.org)
    • Includes biweekly general group webcons and biweekly leadership team webcons
  • OMG model-based engineering environment (MBEE) interest group (omg.org)
    • Includes quarterly technical meetings (usually in-person)

History and "MBX Ecosystems" versus "Digital Ecosystems" Team Name

We officially kicked off as the “MBX Ecosystems” team at IW19 (Jan 2019) where we held our first mini-workshop. Our IW19 mini-workshop was based on prior mini-workshops at IW15, IW17, and IW18 organized by the INCOSE MBSE Modeling & Simulation Interoperability (MSI) Challenge Team. As interest grew, we realized it was time to spin off as a new MBX/digital ecosystem-focused challenge team.

Initially we were called the “MBX Ecosystems Challenge Team” to underscore the model-based emphasis of the team: MBX = model-based X, where X includes engineering (MBE), systems engineering (MBSE), manufacturing (MBM), test (MBT), operations (MBO), …, enterprise (MBE), sales/application engineering (MBSAE), …, living (MBL), and so on.

Recent trends have been toward using the word “digital” as a familiar and concise prefix. For example: digital engineering, digital enterprise, digital citizen, and so on. The COVID pandemic accelerated the adoption of virtual technologies in 2020 and the digital life in general (plus increasing awareness of digital ecosystems in particular).

All things considered, the term “digital ecosystem” is a good phrase to characterize what our Challenge Team is about, including: architecting/engineering our organization’s digital ecosystems (as well as operating our ecosystems plus the whole lifecycle of a digital ecosystem: ecosystem subsystem upgrades, maintenance, migrations, decommissions, and so on).

Thus in Dec 2020 our challenge team was renamed as the Digital Ecosystems Challenge Team.

During 2021 we are using the combo phrase “MBX/Digital Ecosystems” in presentation/agenda titles and so on to help the transition for people who were accustomed to the MBX Ecosystems name. Starting in 2022 we will simply use the phrase “Digital Ecosystems” in most contexts.

Where needed we distinguish between “traditional digital ecosystems” (with minimal model-based aspects) versus “model-based digital ecosystems” while considering the latter to be increasingly the default/recommended practice.

mbse/ecosystems.txt · Last modified: 2024/01/27 15:05 by peak