CHAPTER 2
1. What is a life cycle? Describe the general life cycle stages for a system.
Life cycle, according to Webster Dictionary, refers to “a series of stages through which
something (as an individual, culture, or manufactured product) passes during its lifetime.”
The life cycle of an engineering system is a sequence of stages/phases in the life of the
2. Describe waterfall model, VEE model and spiral model and their unique characteristics.
Waterfall model is one of the most popular and oldest design process models for systems
engineering, as the name indicates, waterfall model describes the system development in
a linear manner, one stage to another, with the feedback loop back to one step earlier.
3. What is a system requirement? What is a function? Give an example of system function.
4. Describe the system user classes.
System users/operators. Also called customers sometimes, system users can be further
divided into two categories, direct end users and indict users. End users are easy to
understand, these are the people that interact with system directly. Besides end
5. List the major system design processes and describe the purposes and major output for
each of the process.
Conceptual design: in conceptual design, system requirements are being defined and
refined. Systems needs are captured, design rationale is being developed, feasibility
analysis, major output is the functional model of the systems and functional baseline
(Type A spec)
Detailed Design: The purpose of the detailed design is to integrate system components
into its final form based on the results from functional baseline and allocation baseline.
System installation, deployment, operation and maintenance: System is to be installed
and/or delivered to customers and put in operation. The purpose of the this stage is to
6. Describe the system functional model, operational model and physical model. What is the
relationship among these models?
A functional model of the system describes the system functions architecture. It illustrates the
hierarchical relationships among systems functions. Operational model describes the systems
7. Define what is model-based systems engineering.
Model based systems engineering (MBSE) is a formalized application of models to design
systems, defining system requirements, system elements, verification and validation and