ABSTRACT This article addresses the inherent risk in a supply chain that comprises primarily Very Small Entities (VSE) with little to no security proficiency and limited resources and incentive to prioritize system security. In a globalized economy based on outsourcing and risk‐sharing, most engineering activities occur in the smallest companies, even for large and complex projects. The Future of Systems Engineering initiative (FuSE) appropriately has agility at the core of its Systems Security Engineering (SSE) foundation concepts, and VSEs are by their very nature agile. However, the line between agility and chaos may be thin, and engineers at VSEs must often accept a level of restraint and rigidity beyond their comfort level to achieve functional agility. The primary challenge in VSEs is adding structure without the necessary resources to enforce compliance manually. We propose that VSE focus their initial efforts on FuSE SSE Foundation Concepts that play into their nature and strengths as dynamic human social activity systems. Improvements in security proficiency and stakeholder alignment do not necessarily require much formal structure, and digital tools combined with social strategies can add structure to a resource‐constrained environment. Games can be excellent low‐cost tools to provide structure while minimizing resistance, and Agile Model‐Based Systems Engineering (AMBSE) using digital models can support automated enforcement. Here we use the card game Elevation of Privilege (EoP) as an example. Within the context of a SysML Threat Model integrated into a larger System Model, players naturally treat security requirements as traceable functional requirements. Automated model validation, re‐usable components and patterns enforce a Zero‐Trust architecture, a sufficiently formal trust model to provide evidence‐based assurance, yet achievable for small companies with limited resources.

ABSTRACT In most cases, over 80% of a system's cost is already committed during the preliminary design review (PDR) of the life cycle (Claxton 1993 and NASA 2017). Overruns often occur because requirements of certain stakeholders, such as those related to maintainability, are not involved in the system design process early enough. Consequently, a collaborative effort during the design stage should involve the requirements of key stakeholders and decision‐makers. In this perspective, domain ontologies and the sharing of needs should facilitate a common agreement. Systems engineers are key stakeholders to guarantee the viability of the solution system. The integration of domain ontologies within a model‐based systems engineering framework will enable the interconnection of the heterogeneous data needed to integrate maintenance issues into collaborative system design. Adding maintenance requirements earlier in the design process will help limit additional costs and delays.

ABSTRACTThis first‐of‐its‐kind meta‐analysis provides unprecedented insights into systems engineering's evolution through a comprehensive examination of fourteen years of INCOSE International Symposium contributions. By analyzing over 4,000 submissions from nearly 5,000 authors, this study delivers unique value through three interconnected analyses: The Authors Analysis reveals a distinctive “hourglass network” where 10% of contributors generate 43% of intellectual output, alongside a critical 94% first‐year attrition rate. This social architecture illuminates both resilience mechanisms and vulnerability points within the knowledge ecosystem, offering stakeholders targeted intervention opportunities for community development. The Topics Analysis documents the discipline's methodological transformation, quantifying the shift toward model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) growing from 30% to 40% while revealing persistent knowledge gaps in theoretical foundations and empirical validation. The detailed taxonomic classification exposes high‐value research frontiers at disciplinary intersections previously unidentified. The Acceptance Analysis uncovers systematic patterns in knowledge validation, demonstrating how acceptance rates have tightened year‐over‐year (90% to 40%) while certain submission characteristics significantly impact outcomes. This evidence‐based filter mechanism provides contributors with strategic insights for knowledge dissemination. Through synthesizing these analyses, this research provides a cohesive portrait of a discipline at an inflection point—transitioning from practice‐driven origins toward greater formalization. For INCOSE leadership, educators, and practitioners, these integrated insights enable data‐driven strategies to strengthen community resilience, address knowledge gaps, and enhance systems engineering's capacity to tackle the increasingly complex sociotechnical challenges of the 21st century.

ABSTRACTThis article summarizes the development of a System of Systems Analytic Workbench (SoS AWB) that provides a set of computational tools to facilitate better‐informed decision‐making on evolving SoS architectures. The workbench motif is adopted since SoS practitioners typically generate archetypal technical queries that can be mapped to appropriate analysis methods best suited to provide outputs and insights directly relevant to posed questions. After an overview of the workbench framework, four distinct methods currently available for use are presented along with their distinctive aspects in the concept of use.

ABSTRACTIn early design stages, business developers and systems engineers deal with uncertainties on the business problem, in line with the company's strategy. Before designing the system, the business developers need to set the boundaries of the business problem: What are the values to deliver to which stakeholders? What are their preferences? What are the future trends or the evolution of the markets and the external context? These questions regarding the uncertainties on the definition of the problem may not have answers and need to be investigated to assess the value robustness of the possible design alternatives. The aim of this work is to support decision‐making in business and system design thanks to a broad and rapid analysis of a large amount of business design alternatives under uncertainty. We introduce a decision‐making support method, called ValXplore, based on visual analysis and data analytics to explore the uncertainties on and in the business problem. The method was tested and validated on an industrial case study to assess the benefits and limits of the semi‐reusability of a launch vehicle. Both business developers and systems engineers can rapidly explore a broad space of alternatives to increase the value to the stakeholders, by performing sensitivity and uncertainty analyses.

ABSTRACTHow we represent systems is fundamental to the history of mathematics, science, and engineering. Model‐based engineering methods shift the nature of representation of systems from historical prose forms to explicit data structures more directly comparable to those of science and mathematics. However, using models does not guarantee simpler representation—indeed a typical fear voiced about models is that they may be too complex.Minimality of system representations is of both theoretical and practical interest. The mathematical and scientific interest is that the size of a system's “minimal representation” is one definition of its complexity. The practical engineering interest is that the size and redundancy of engineering specifications challenge the effectiveness of systems engineering processes. INCOSE thought leaders have asked how systems work can be made 10:1 simpler to attract a 10:1 larger global community of practitioners. And so, we ask: What is the smallest model of a system?