A Case Study of AI Usage within the INCOSE Technical Process

Abstract

The purpose of the research described herein is to analyze the use of AI platforms by a user implementing a generic Product Development Process (PDP) mapped onto the INCOSE Technical Process (ITP) and to identify the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. The team's original work on a previously finished project, which followed the PDP without using AI tools, served as a crucial benchmark for conducting a comparative analysis with responses from the AI platform. It was found that only some of the stages of the ITP currently allow for effective template prompts. Much of the useful work requires an open, somewhat extensive two-way dialog with the AI platform, not a simple plug-and-play approach. The wording is important for each prompt, so the user must understand the aspects of the problem they are trying to solve. While the two Al platforms utilized produced comparable responses, the output depended heavily on the prompt context. Evaluating the AI platform performance is difficult because the AI platform response (output) and the prompt inserted by the user (input) are not mutually exclusive. The team found that AI can be more useful in customer needs definition and stakeholder identification, and less useful in concept selection and search internally steps. The recommendation is to employ AI as a supplement to the ITP rather than as the exclusive contributor. As technology continues to advance, we can expect to see new applications emerge, and the team expects that AI's impact will likely be quite significant.