National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of ISO/IEC/IEEE 24641:2023.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee IST/15, Software and systems engineering.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

Contractual and legal considerations

This publication has been prepared in good faith, however no representation, warranty, assurance or undertaking (express or implied) is or will be made, and no responsibility or liability is or will be accepted by BSI in relation to the adequacy, accuracy, completeness or reasonableness of this publication. All and any such responsibility and liability is expressly disclaimed to the full extent permitted by the law.

This publication is provided as is, and is to be used at the recipient’s own risk.

The recipient is advised to consider seeking professional guidance with respect to its use of this publication.

This publication is not intended to constitute a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 30 June 2023.

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the different types of ISO/IEC documents should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives or www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs).

IEEE Standards documents are developed within the IEEE Societies and the Standards Coordinating Committees of the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) Standards Board. The IEEE develops its standards through a consensus development process, approved by the American National Standards Institute, which brings together volunteers representing varied viewpoints and interests to achieve the final product. Volunteers are not necessarily members of the Institute and serve without compensation. While the IEEE administers the process and establishes rules to promote fairness in the consensus development process, the IEEE does not independently evaluate, test, or verify the accuracy of any of the information contained in its standards.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. Details of any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction and/or on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www.iso.org/patents) or the IEC list of patent declarations received (see https://patents.iec.ch).

Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not constitute an endorsement.

For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), see www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html. In the IEC, see www.iec.ch/understanding-standards.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 24641 was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 7, Software and systems engineering, in cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society Systems and Software Engineering Standards Committee, under the Partner Standards Development Organization cooperation agreement between ISO and IEEE.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html and www.iec.ch/national-committees.

Introduction

As systems grow in scale and complexity, some in the systems engineering community turn to model-based systems and software engineering (MBSSE) to, among other objectives, manage complexity, maintain consistency, and help ensure traceability during system development. With an MBSSE approach, the systems and software engineering activities rely on evolving models that serve as the main or major source of knowledge about the system-of-interest and its life cycle processes, which could be any entity subject to a system model such as a program, project, product, or company.

MBSSE benefits differ significantly from ‘engineering with models’, which has been a common practice among the engineering disciplines for decades and that is mainly based on independent discipline-specific models that, even if very useful for each discipline and system analysis contribution, do not provide an overall understanding of the architecture of the system sharable among stakeholders, e.g. computer-aided design (CAD) for mechanical engineering, aerodynamics models, control loop simulations. In addition, due to the diversity of approaches and terminologies (e.g. model-driven development or MDD), MBSSE usually falls within the context of a specific engineering discipline (e.g. MDD for the software engineering community).

MBSSE is the formalized application of modelling to support systems engineering or software engineering activities. Faced with the issues and challenges linked to the growing complexity of the systems to be developed, document-centric approaches are less and less suitable. The MBSSE approach makes it possible to develop logically consistent multi-view architecture description. These serve as a bridge to enable the traceable, verifiable and dynamic correlation of the system-of-interest and/or software-of-interest models cross multidiscipline and throughout its entire life cycle, and to drive the system and software engineering processes, activities and tasks at all levels of its hierarchy from system-of-systems to system element across multiple engineering disciplines and throughout all stages of its life cycle

From MBSSE perspective, other engineering disciplines (mechanical, thermal, electronic, electrical, etc.) are also considered.

Thus, a need exists to specify the considerations necessary for undertaking the application of MBSSE within an organization. An organization needs to address the considerations necessary for supporting the establishment of each project environment within its overall ecosystem, and the exchange of models between stakeholder organizations.

This document addresses MBSSE-related processes by categorizing them into four process groups:

Plan MBSSE
Build models
Perform MBSSE
Support models

Each process is defined in terms of purpose, inputs, outcomes, and supporting tasks. The task descriptions include tool and method guidance and the recommended capabilities needed to successfully implement them. The relationships among the four process groups in this document, the four process groups in ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 and ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207, and the life cycle model and stages in ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748‑1 are described in Annex A.

This document is intended to benefit those who acquire, supply, develop, operate, and maintain MBSSE tools and methods. It can be used by:

organizations that need to implement or build models – to understand, adopt, and enact the MBSSE processes, tools, and methods (it also helps to evaluate and select relevant tools and methods based on business- and user-related criteria);
tool vendors who facilitate or leverage MBSSE practices – to provide a set of recommended tool capabilities for planning MBSSE, building models, MBSSE performance, and support.

Systems of systems are considered in this document to benefit from the same processes, methods and tool capabilities as any system.

The relationships between this document and other standards are described in Annex E.

NOTE 1 This document prescribes a way to engineer systems and software based on models thanks to a reference model and four process groups; however, other particular uses of models which are out of the scope of this document are used in “model engineering” in other ways: For example, in model-driven modernization [also called architecture-driven modernization (ADM) in object management group (OMG) terms], models are (automatically) generated from the existing code and artefacts of a running system in order to represent it and then build a new system in a different platform. Another usage scenario of models occurs in what is called “models@runtime” whereby the models are used to change the system and evolve with it; these are normally used in self-adaptive systems to achieve the required system self-adaptation features.

NOTE 2 The reference model does not take into account the system evolution (and that of its related models) as a fundamental phase of systems or software engineering in the maintenance and evolution of the system and its models.

NOTE 3 The design within the different domains, for example, mechanical, hydraulics, electrical, electronics, control algorithms, and software, has been performed using model-based techniques for decades. However, each domain uses specialized languages and tool chains for its modelling activities. The guideline to propose how the methods, modelling languages and tools apply in these domains is outside of the scope of this document. However, the interfaces of the engineering models and the system models are crucial and essential for applying MBSSE.

In this document, the following verbal forms are used:

“shall” indicates a requirement;
“should” indicates a recommendation;
“may” indicates a permission;

1 Scope

This document deals with the tool capabilities and methods for model-based systems and software engineering (MBSSE). This document:

specifies a reference model for the overall structure and processes of MBSSE-specific processes, and describes how the components of the reference model fit together;
specifies interrelationships between the components of the reference model;
specifies MBSSE-specific processes for model-based systems and software engineering; the processes are described in terms of purpose, inputs, outcomes and tasks;
specifies methods to support the defined tasks of each process;
specifies tool capabilities to automate or semi-automate tasks or methods.

This document does not bring any additional life cycle processes for system and software but specifies an MBSSE reference model considered as activities, not only from the life cycle perspectives of systems engineering problem solving and the system-of-interest evolution, but also from the cognitive perspectives of modelling and model management, which can sustain and facilitate the system and software life cycle processes during digital transformation and in the digital age.

The processes defined in this document are applicable for a single project, as well as for an organization performing multiple projects or an enterprise. These processes are applicable for managing and performing the systems and software engineering activities based on models within any stage in the life cycle of a system-of-interest.

2 Normative references

3 Terms, definitions, and abbreviated terms

3.1 Terms and definitions

3.2 Abbreviated terms

4 Conformance

4.1 Intended usage

4.2 Full conformance

4.3 Tailored conformance

5 MBSSE reference model

5.1 Overview

5.2 Build models processes and data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW)

6 Plan MBSSE

6.1 General

6.2 Define the scope and objectives of MBSSE

6.3 Plan model development and governance

6.4 Plan resources and assets

6.5 Manage knowledge reuse

7 Build models

7.1 General

7.2 Produce system models

7.3 Produce discipline-specific models

7.4 Verify models

7.5 Validate models

7.6 Simulate systems using models

7.7 Make decisions using models

8 Support models

8.1 General

8.2 Manage technical quality

8.3 Manage configuration

8.4 Manage data and models

8.5 Share models for collaboration

9 Perform MBSSE

9.1 General

9.2 Perform business and mission analysis

9.3 Perform operational analysis

9.4 Perform function analysis

9.5 Perform system structure design

9.6 Perform system analysis

9.7 Perform domain design integration

9.8 Perform system verification and validation

Bibliography

BS ISO/IEC/IEEE 24641:2023

Systems and Software engineering. Methods and tools for model-based systems and software engineering

Current

Published:

30 Jun 2023