Model-Based System Architectures

Speaker: Stephan Roth, Tim Weilkiens
Venue: Local Speaker in Hamburg (Stephan & Tim) and Warsaw (Tim)

The talk covers the role of the system architect in a model-based environment and gives an overview about different architecture tasks. Additionally, we present some concrete tools for the system architect.

Starting with a brief motivation and definition of model-based system architectures we will present the following topics:

Architecture kinds and their relationships: Base Architecture, Functional Architecture, Logical Architecture, Product Architecture, Physical Architecture
We introduce the different architecture kinds and their relationships. Each architectural work costs effort and you typically do not sell the outcome. The architectural work supports (and sometimes drives) the development of a product. Therefore, it is important to have a critical eye on the value and effort.

Product Line Engineering – How to manage variants
Many industries shift from mass production to mass customization. Associated with that trend engineers must manage more and more variants of their products. We present concepts of variant modeling and the impact on system architectures.

Architecture assessments
A system architecture is a set of crucial technical decisions. Typically, it is hard to revert such a decision at a later stage of the development process. It is absolute important to assess the decisions before using them as a basis for further development. We present an architecture assessment method.

Soft skills: It’s all about communication – the soft side of a system architect
Engineers like to focus on the hard facts. However the soft skills are getting more and more important in the age of highly dynamic markets with lots of surprises, globalization with international collaborations, and interdisciplinary engineering.

Biography
Stephan Roth and Tim Weilkiens are authors of the book Model-Based System Architecture published by Wiley in 2015.

Stephan Roth is a coach, consultant, and trainer for Systems and Software Engineering at the German consultancy oose Innovative Informatik eG in Hamburg. He holds a State-certified Technical Assistant for Computer Science from Physikalisch-Technische Lehranstalt (PTL) Wedel and is a Certified Systems Engineer (GfSE)® – Level C.

Tim Weilkiens is the CEO at the German consultancy oose Innovative Informatik eG, coach, consultant, and trainer. He has introduced model-based systems engineering to a variety of industry sectors, has worked as a software developer for medical devices, and as a consultant for business modeling, software and systems engineering. He is co-author of the SysML specification, author of several books about modeling and a frequent speaker on conferences. He is author of the MBSE methodology SYSMOD.