Connecting Business Development and Systems Engineering with ISO/IEC 29110 Standard in Small and Medium Enterprises of France

As systems are getting larger, customers as well as systems integrators need to work with more performing and innovative small and medium-size suppliers. To stay in the game, these small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have to face new challenges in order to develop their strategic positioning. The authors propose that many of these business development challenges can be addressed by SMEs by using a Systems Engineering framework such as the ISO/IEC 29110. AFIS, the French Systems Engineering association (French INCOSE chapter), and French government funded a 24-month project where a team of 8 experts, members of the AFIS and INCOSE, helped 6 enterprises, located in the south of France, in implementing Systems Engineering processes, using the engineering and management processes of the ISO/IEC 29110 framework, and measured the effectiveness of their actions. The selected enterprises are operating in a wide range of domains such as automotive, space and agriculture, and their size ranges from 10 to 150 people. The lessons learned show how these processes helped the SMEs to understand the benefits of Systems Engineering for their business development, to embrace a bigger point of view and understand how their business environment changes. Finally, the authors show how close the profiles of business developer and systems engineer are, based on systems thinking abilities.