Identifying Application Key Knowledge through System Operations Modeling

One of the problems associated with complex systems engineering is identifying the system knowledge relevant to build system implementation. System operations are an essential part of this knowledge. Software and system engineering standards highlight the importance of system operations; templates for a concept of operations document are available from different standard bodies in the context of requirements engineering and specification. However, specific guidelines for operations modeling are not usually provided. This paper introduces an approach to systematically model system operations. The cornerstone for this is an operations metamodel; this metamodel is presented within this paper and has been defined using UML 2.x. The baseline for the metamodel is a schema, also introduced within the paper, which formalizes system operations in terms of commands acting on systems, inputs to the system, and different kinds of outputs classified into responses, notifications and alarms. Operations models, as presented here, comprise system knowledge essentials from a functional point of view but reduced in size compared to the whole system specification. They can be deployed in several ways; this paper presents their use as drivers for system development and validation from early lifecycle stages.