Development of an agent-based model incorporating Function–Behavior–Structure framework to enable systems engineering design process evaluation

An important step in the development of any process is evaluation. Evaluation ensures that the process affects effectiveness, efficiency, or other metrics as designed. Without evaluation, processes must stand solely on the theories, axioms, and/or heuristics that formed them. Outcome or objectives-based evaluations are especially useful in seeing if the expected impact is realized. Systems and design engineering present problems for outcome evaluations due to system design efforts being long in duration, expensive, organization/team specific, and environment/context specific. These characteristics make repeating the same effort under the same conditions using different processes difficult, if not impossible. While a comparison of processes for evaluation in a real application may not be feasible, a simulation of the processes with agents that capture system design behaviors may produce findings to support hypotheses. This paper examines the use of agent-based modeling and simulation to compare pseudo-waterfall and pseudo-agile engineering processes for a simple design problem. The Function–Behavior–Structure (FBS) model of design is used along with empirical data from FBS studies to examine the performance of a two-person design team using pseudo-waterfall and pseudo-agile engineering processes. The results of this exercise show possible advantages of agile-like processes in total time to complete the design.