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TRAK Article Published by The Institution of Engineers (Singapore)

This is one of those slightly strange happenstance events - completely unplanned although not beyond the original intent.

At the 2010 INCOSE Annual Systems Engineering Conference Chris Lowe and I presented on ‘Human Factors - On the Right TRAK?’ which looked at the consideration of human factors in the design or TRAK itself and the use of TRAK for human factors work’. At the time INCOSE only really wanted the presentation and anything else was optional. In the end we decided to go over the top and produce an accompanying document in some detail. As much as anything this was to make sure the essence / thinking was preserved since looking at some thinly-worded slides might not convey what was done in person at the time.

Some months later the Singapore Institution of Engineers approached INCOSE to ask if they could reproduce the article. Naturally we said “yes” - the original is on Slideshare in any case. Many more months passed and nothing happened and then in September 2011 they asked for the source files but had some problems using them which meant their deadline was missed. Anyway it looks to have been published at long last.

Having had a look it looks as though they’ve missed Chris off the headline (but he is in the acknowledgement at the end). Had we have been asked we could have provided decent graphics since it looks as though something has got munged in the publication.

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External Links

• The Singapore Engineer Magazine (December 2011)
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TRAK Receives an INCOSE 2010 Working Group Award

TRAK benefits from a lot of effort put in by a group of people who do this because they believe in it and have the motivation to get stuck in. A lot of this is invisible behind the scenes work and it is all unpaid. I can’t deny that it is nice, however, when this effort is recognised. It was therefore a pleasant surprise when an email popped up with a screenshot of an INCOSE working group award.

To put this in some context, INCOSE state:

The Working Group Awards and Recognition Program rewards efforts and achievements by individual or multiple Working Groups in support of INCOSE’s mission. By focusing on the Working Groups, it specifically recognises team effort. It does not replace existing awards, such as Service Awards.

All Working Groups that have approved charters under Technical Operations are eligible to receive awards under the Working Group Awards and Recognition Program. Not all awards are awarded every year. The Awards recognise exemplary Working Group activities in specific areas:

and it is in the following context that TRAK received the award:

Achieving the Systems Engineering Vision award is presented to the Working Group that has made the most significant contribution toward achieving the Systems Engineering Vision 2020.

Kuldeep, Colin and I received the award on behalf of TRAK at a Railway Interest Group (RIG) meeting in London, collecting it from the president-elect of INCOSE, John Thomas on his recent trip to the UK.

Presentation of INCOSE 2010 Working Group Award to TRAK by John Thomas (president elect for INCOSE) at LU Headquarters. (Photograph © London Underground Ltd 2011)

TRAK has always been about more than just the definition of a general purpose enterprise architecture framework - it’s as much about how it’s released and managed and maintained throughout its life and the interface and dynamics presented to users in doing so. We try hard to do this using in the way that you’d specify and manage any system so it’s doubly-nice to get recognition from the professional body that represents systems engineering.

The keener eyed will spot some advice being given from the INCOSE UK Architecture Working Group via feature and bug requests at the Sourceforge sites through which TRAK is released. I should stress that we’re always keen to encourage input and interaction from anyone - you don’t have to be part of a company or large organisation.

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New Revision (“The ISO 42010 Mix”) of TRAK Released

Just managed to shovel the last part of the documents that defines TRAK into cyberspace last night. The main purpose of the revision is to anticipate the likely requirements from ISO/IEC 42010 expected to be released under a slightly new name during 2011. There are quite a few changes to the ISO not the least of which is that it has requirements for architecture frameworks and makes reference to a framework metamodel. The opportunity has also been used to respond to constructive comments and requests made by the INCOSE UK Architecture Working Group.

In the end this has proved a bigger change to the existing documents than anticipated. We now have a 3 document set that defines TRAK since it became clear that things that were global or common or which were best dealt with as “a whole” would be best separated into an overall TRAK Enterprise Architecture Framework document. This has meant things like the bye laws, colour rules and conformance/non-conformance with TRAK being moved into this document. It also provides the better place to provide advice on choosing an architecture description language to represent TRAK and to describe how TRAK relates to ISO/IEC 42010.

This new 3 document structure has resulted in breaking out a new project on Sourceforge. The top-level reference for TRAK is now trak.sourceforge.io which is an improvement on the old bifurcated reference to both the viewpoints (trakviewpoints.sourceforge.io) and metamodel (trakmetamodel.sourceforge.io) projects / sites. Errors or feature requests for any of the documents can be made on the respective site.

As a result of comments made by Rich Hilliard (always useful) it became clear that the old viewpoint definitions needed to be sharpened up. In particular I’ve added stakeholders derived from the standard , added more detail and examples to the presentation sections. Some of this existed in the old days before release as open source but never got incorporated into the new documents. In any case some of the thinking and the changes to the ISO have changed the content and it had to be started afresh. A suggestion was to add a ‘well-formedness’ section which attempts to define the minimum acceptable content for a view of each type. The latter was quite hard work and an empirical task as you think you’ve got it nailed, draw an example to immediately find that it breaks the rules. It’s not quite complete but a lot better for the effort and therefore worth releasing rather than waiting for perfection.

No doubt there will be a few “after shocks” but nothing of the scale of this revision (I hope!).

One of the ongoing questions is how to make it more concise, less wordy but accessible and understandable to the ‘normal’ Mk1 Human Being (the “non-softie”). In particular is there a way to define the minimum content visually without words - there are ways from the software world but are these likely to understandable to the non-softie or non-tecchie? Constructive suggestions on a postcard.

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External Links

• TRAK Enterprise Architecture Framework - overtall
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• INCOSE UK Architecture Working Group
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