The SEH Package has been updated for the 2023 version of IEEE-15288, and has a new graphical editor, which helps visualize Processes, Inputs, and Outputs, to recognize priorities for the System displayed. Click here to see the two minute demo here.
It runs in Aras Innovator® Community Edition 2025.
The Systems Engineering Handbook, is written by INCOSE, the International Committee on Systems Engineering, a non profit group of practicing engineers who project consensus on sound engineering practice. Version 5 is updated for the IEEE-15288 2023. INCOSE making the dense expensive standard accessible to humble engineers like you and me.
The core of the convergent engineering process is a feedback loop, encapsulated in the 4-Rs, and PDCA. Systems Engineering emerged in about 2000 as a result of software tools becoming so powerful and affordable that larger and larger organizations addressed larger and more complex problems. This created a need for better ways of organizing the work.
The goal of the SEH5 Community Solution is to enable young engineers to use and learn the principles of SE, and for practising engineers to apply them to their work.
Interestingly, the handbook does not require the use of software, engineers achieved their goals without it before it was invented. SE is a way of thinking, and that drives what you do, and the way that you do it.
I came to SE by recognizing that its principles are aligned with what I have learned by experience.
1. Writing things down helps you understand what you think, challenge yourself on why you think it, and communicate the thought to others.
2. Split large problems into smaller ones.
3. Design and development works in a spiral in a fog, it is iterative, each iteration hopefully making progress.
4. Tracing what decisions were made, where and when, helps recognize when a reset might be required.
5. Priorities change as work proceeds.
6. Test small solutions on their own and then test things together.
7. Adopt a mental checklist (RRRR, PDCA) to help work out what to do when you don’t know what to do.
The Handbook, and SEH5 help you do that. That’s all.
There are 36 processes in the handbook. Not every system will need them all.
Start with Tailoring. With the goal of making SE accessible to school students, I create a new IO the PDCA for which Markdown format is highly recommended, it produces professional looking output from a simple text editor.
With that TLR, I use a simplified set of processes BMA, SNRD, IMPL, VAL and VER. The PDCA IO can contain information pertinent to several of these.
The graphical editor enables visualizing, editing, and tracing of the flow, inspection of documents or other SECIs.
Please use documentation in the Repo. Guess what, it’s Markdown! Join and Send feedback if you would like try it out.