Trip Report - INCOSE IS 2014 Systems Engineering meets (needs) open integrations + 2025 vision

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the INCOSE International Symposium (IS) 2014, an event I've never been to before.  I've been spending more and more time over the years with Systems Engineering, it was good to learn more, share a bit more what it going on with OSLC and related topics, catch up with some friends and help some implementors lay out a plan.

One of the things that struck me as interesting is how the speakers and attendees referred to OSLC.  I'm used to seeing so many presentations over the years defining it, spelling out what the acronym means, etc.  At the IS, there was none of that.  It was just referred to by name, as everyone knows clearly what it is.  I didn't hear anyone asking or taking a note to look it up later.  OSLC was often referred to as an area which showed great promise for SE tool interoperability: as a protocol to exchange data, a way to define a minimal data model at web scale and simple ways of doing UI integration.

We had an impromptu meet up at lunch for OSLC, we in fact had too many people at the table (and yes I was the only IBMer).  It included people from PTC, Atego, JPL, Deere, Koneksys, Eclipse Foundation. Great discussion to share peoples interest, share what things are in motion and look for a way to coordinate all the activity going on in all the different places: INCOSE TII, OASIS OSLC, OMG OSLC4MBSE and more.  Looking forward to following up with this group and seeing how it advances.

I was able to give an overview and update on OSLC to an audience the represented many industries: automotive (2), air & space (2) and large machinery.

An interesting piece of work that I received when I registered what INCOSE's System's Engineering Vision for 2025, specifically these items:

• Foundations and Standards (p. 20) 
  "This systems engineering body of knowledge today is documented in a broad array of standards, handbooks, academic literature, and web-resources, focusing on a variety of domains. A concerted effort is being made to continually improve, update and further organize this body of knowledge. "
• Current Systems Engineering Practices and Challenges (p. 20-21) practice areas of "Modeling, Simulation, and Visualization", "Design Traceability by Model-Based Systems Engineering" which highlight the growing needs around improved tools and tool interoperability.
• Leveraging Technology for Systems Engineering Tools (p. 30)
  Discusses the need to move towards a set of tools that allow for: "high fidelity simulation, immersive technologies to support data visualization, semantic web technologies to support data integration, search, and reasoning, and communication technologies to support collaboration. Systems engineering tools will benefit from internet-based connectivity and knowledge representation to readily exchange information with related fields."

I'm hoping to make it to Boston around September 10th to run an OSLC workshop for the INCOSE community, stay tuned.

Rational User Conference (aka IBM Innovate) Take #10

Last week I attended my 10th (yes I said one-zero or tenth) Rational User Conference (aka IBM Innovate, aka Rational Software Developer User Conference, aka Rational Software Conference).  It is also the 5th time I have attended while talking about OSLC.  Hard to believe that Mik Kersten and myself did the first ever OSLC presentation back in 2009.  It has been interesting to be part of the transition from people hearing "O S L C" and having no idea, to today where most attendees not only know what it is, they are actively working to build integrations using OSLC, encouraging their other tool suppliers to support it and active in various OSLC activities such as specification working groups or general community promotion.   I has transitioned from an unknown new concept, to the way we do integrations.  By "we", I'm not just talking about Rational, I'm talking about attendees there that were talking how how they are using OSLC such as Airbus, NEC, ...

Though, still many people have a hard time saying or spelling OSLC right (it is a tough one)...most commonly is OSCL.  If only we pushed to rename it back in 2010 to something like I proposed as SLIC, that would have been...well "slick".  I digress.

This year, I arrived a couple days before the official conference started as it was a good opportunity for those of us very active in OSLC to get together for some face-to-face discussions on OSLC strategy.  This was spearheaded by the Steering Committee (SC).  Out of these early discussions (which have been a continuation of ongoing thoughts by the community and SC), came the idea of an organizing and higher-level concept of "Integration Patterns".  I threw together a page to articulate the thoughts, propose a way forward and start to gather interest.  This was discussed at couple other times during the week, such as the OSLC SC discussion at the Wednesday's Birds of a Feather session, which was well received from the attendees.

Sunday afternoon held the Open Technology Summit, where various leaders in open technologies shared how various efforts have help drive business efficiencies and improve overall time and quality of delivery around such things as: OpenStack, OSLC, CloudFoundry, Apache Cordova, ...

I led a panel discussion titled "Best practices on implementing integrated tools" with panelist with a wide and vast set of experience (I hope to share the recording once I receive it)

Innovate2014 Panel - Best Practices on Implementing Integrations from Steve Speicher

After 5 years, Mik and I were reunited as we talked about "Lifecycle Tool Integration through Open Interfaces" (though Mik and I have been talking/collaborating this whole time, it wasn't like a band breakup and then reunion)

Innovate2014 Better Integrations Through Open Interfaces from Steve Speicher

There were many other great conversations, learning how customers are looking to build out their own OSLC implementations by either evolving their own in house tools or looking to build adapters for 3rd party tools.  The demand continues to grow and look forward to continue to helping them succeed by making their integrations happen.

As with many of these conferences, especially ones that you've gone to 10 times, it is great to catch up with many good friends I've made over the years.  Now on to make sure we continue to deliver value and have some cool things to show and talk about next year (oh and at next week's EclipseCon France event and end of June's INCOSE conference).