I like the model organization structure that Harmony aMBSE is suggesting in Agile System Engineering, chapter 3.3 Organize Your Models Like It Matters.
I have one question though:
What is the reason that the Deployment View Pkg is in the subsystem models?
That means that there is no holistic Deployment View (sometimes also called "technical context"), because the information is split over different subsystem models, right?
I believe this view is especially important to integration and network guys. I also think that it is not a good idea to put a common Deployment View in the SE model as you do not want the dependencies to the physical interface packages there. I am wondering, does it make sense to keep a "complete" Deployment Package in the shared model?
Please let me know what you think.
It does help. :-) One more question: What is the best location for the system-wide deployment view? Is it the shared model?
The reason is that often, most of the interesting aspects of the deployment architecture take place at the subsystem level; a subsystem is an interdisciplinary coherent set of functionality that is then decomposed with deployment architecture. However, this does not mean that system-wide deployment architecture is useless or even inappropriate. You can create various views of the architecture at the system level (and in the system model).
I've done this using different approaches for different circumstances. I might identify, one one diagram different engineering facets (i.e. aspect of a single engineering discipline) using color coding and/or stereotypes. Or, if each facet is sufficiently complex, create multiple diagrams each of which show a single engineering facet. For example, for the ACES system in the Deskbook, I might create one showing all the electronics, another showing all the hydraulics, and a third showing all the CPUs and the software facets.
When I create a system-wide deployment architecture, I STILL must create deployment architectures for each of the subsystems because those detailed decisions aren't made until during the hand off to downstream engineering, and those decisions are largely local to a specific subsystem.
Does that help?
- b