Disciplinary Governance for Software Defined Objects

Abstract :

Software-defined products are transforming industries by enabling the development of agile, programmable systems that address dynamic operational needs and evolving mission demands over time. As software becomes the primary value driver, the focus shifts toward optimizing governance strategies that harmonize the development cycles of software and hardware. This presentation will explore the challenges of managing the interplay between software and hardware through an A&D use case. Central to this discussion is the role of architecture as the cornerstone of governance, providing the framework to ensure seamless collaboration, system coherence, and lifecycle alignment. We will demonstrate the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform’s capabilities in delivering an architecture-driven governance approach for software-defined products. By placing system and software architectures at the core, the platform enables organizations to manage complexity, enhance traceability, and align workflows.

Presentation

Introduction

Challenges

First of all the certification of system and software are mandatory and become more complex due :

The increasing complexity of the system

The master of a large number of standards to address.

Then, another challenge is the collaboration in the industrial value network. Within the OEM, a large number of disciplines and people are involved and the collaboration with suppliers are mandatory as well.

All of that provides other industrial challenges to tackle :

  • the cost to prove compliancy and quality

  • And the maintenance of knowledge and knowhow.

Thus, there is a global need of collaboration that needs to be addressed with a proper governance.

Pace of evolution

 

We oberve that the pace of evolution is different depending on the discipline with three main views :

Systems which are mainly driven by providing a specification

Hardware design where the vibration is lead to the constraint of factory investment.

Software design where the vibration can have a higher level of frenquency.

 

What we observe is that those disciplines works on their domain respecting their cycle time.

System architecture's cycle time is used to provide meeting points with all the disciplines or with specific disciplines like software.

Thus  and this is what we will demonstrate today, system architecture is the orchestrator of the multidiscipline design.

 

A governance Framework

At Dassault Systèmes, we defined a governance framework. structured in 4 pillars :

Multidisciplinary Model Lifecycle Management 

This is the first pillar of the governance; managing the lifecycle and the status of the dataset.

Effective lifecycle management ensures consistent configurations, version control, and integration across domains. It helps avoid silos and promotes collaboration among teams working on different parts of a system.

One of the main challenge for this pillar is to consider the various way of managing the data depending on disciplines (Hardware design, Software Design, System Design) that needs to be shared and aligned.

Note : This is the purpose of the SUP.8 Configuration Management process of ASPICE which is to establish and maintain the integrity of relevant configuration items and baselines, and make them available to affected parties.

Cross Models Traceability and Data Analytics 

Traceability ensures transparency and accountability in system development. It connects requirements to implementations and tests, enabling teams to perform impact analyses efficiently. Integrating data analytics boosts decision-making by identifying trends and gaps.

Note : traceability is an important topic that appears as a BP in many Process Groups

 

Continuous Integration and Simulation 

Establishes continuous integration solution within system architecture, manages executable models, and utilizes cloud-based simulation for real-time validation. Continuous integration and simulation are critical for agile development. This pillar ensures that system behavior is validated iteratively, reducing errors early in the lifecycle and enhancing adaptability to changes.

This pillar is directly link to the validation and verification processes of ASPICE. 

Program and Project Planning

Addresses essential project management elements, including task planning, risk management, issue management, and aligning project elements with disciplinary models. This pillar is drectly linked to Management and support process group. with configuration, risk and change management in addition of our proposal for project management.

Demo

Personas 

During this demo, we will show how a product manager, a system architect a simulation engineer, and EE architect, a software architect and a software engineer are collaborating together using the governance operation model.

Data Management

High Level Process

Demo step by step

Step TitleVideos
0 Personas 

1

Decide Change Request

Collaborative Industry Innovator  Systems Traceability Analyst 

In this step, the product manager is using the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform to support decision making and collaboration registry

Here is is defining a change request where he :

•Define the work to be done through an impact analysis

•And assign it to the system architect

Change Request initialization

Execute System Study

Magic Cyber Systems engineer Collaborative Designer for CATIA Magic Collaborative Industry Innovator 

In this step, the System Architect 

  • is using the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform as a collaborative environment

  • is using CATIA Magic as a working environment

She access to the context of her activities from the change request and the impact analyzis.

She manages the lifecycle of the system model and creates a branch to work on an isolated environment.

She performs system architecture authoring and commit in CATIA Magic.

She uses the impact analyzis to request simulation study environment to the simulation engineer.

 

 

 

3

Execute  Simulation study

Magic Cyber Systems engineer Collaborative Designer for CATIA Magic 

The simulation engineer defines the simulation architecture from the existing system architecture using an isolated branch.

She is using FMU as a behavioral model coming from various simulation tool like Dymola, Stimulus or Matlab

Those FMU are used to associate behaviors to the architecture elements.

She generates an executable file using the SSP standard that can be executed in any simulation solution that is supporting the SSP.

SSP stands for  System Structure and Parameterization (SSP). 

 

4

Measure Traceability and impact analysis

Systems Traceability Analyst 

The system architect is using the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform to collaborate with discipline design by analyzing the impact of the architecture change on the dataset.

 

5

Decide Change control Board

Collaborative Industry Innovator (Collaborator) Systems Traceability Analyst 

The product manager can read the assessment made by the system architect with a documented collaborator document and a impact analyzis of the architecture change on the implementation.

6

Execute Change Execution

Magic Cyber Systems engineer Collaborative Designer for CATIA Magic Agile Governance PlugIn Systems Traceability Analyst 

The software architect initializes the Agile planning from the software model by creating stories.

Those stories are connected to Jira to initiate the agile planning.

The traceability is kept between the system element and Jira. So that, they access to the synthesis of the test case and results coming from Jira.

Magic Cyber Systems engineer Collaborative Designer for CATIA Magic Systems Software Production Engineer Systems Traceability Analyst 

The software architect defines the software architecture in UML and generates the code structure in git for the software engineer.

The traceability is kept between system model elements and the software code.

Initialize work breakdwon Structure
Initialize Code Structure

7

Measure Change monitoring

Data Engineer Systems Traceability Analyst 

The system architect can leverage the data centricity of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform to monitor the changes made by the discipline design with suitable data perspectives according to your specific need.

Next Step : Verification & Validation of system under development