Function Mapping: A Sound Practice for System Design

In recent years, standards have begun to formalize the concepts of systems engineering, capturing the long understood idea that functionality and structure are the key elements of sound practice. This paper introduces a novel and successful technique for doing system design that goes to the "heart of the matter". Functionality is initially derived from system requirements and then structure is determined from the functionality, setting the stage for software and hardware development. The technique is called function mapping.