The importance of understanding context
Understanding context is critical in creating systems that accomplish the goals for which they are built.
In systems engineering, context includes the set of things (people, other systems, and so forth) with which the system interacts and how those interactions proceed so that the system can fulfill its role in the enterprise.1
Understanding context, then, means understanding the interaction of the system with entities external to it (actors), understanding the services required of the system, and understanding what gets exchanged between the system and its actors. Understanding context is also important for ensuring that the appropriate requirements exist or will be developed.
Managing context explicitly means being aware of the shifts in context as you go from one model or decomposition level to the next. In this chapter we discuss how to delineate the boundaries of the system, how it relates to its enclosing enterprise, and how we proceed from a
Context and description
Describing something seems at first glace to be a simple task. In practice, however, a number of issues arise. Consider an ordinary pencil. How would you describe it? While it is tempting to leap into writing an actual description, consider the question literally.
How would you describe the pencil, that is, how would you proceed to arrive at a description?
The answer depends on the viewpoint from which the describer is operating. Now imagine that you are an engineer working for a pencil manufacturing company. Does this viewpoint affect how you would describe the pencil?
How you describe something depends on your particular viewpoint. Which description is the real one, or the right one? Of course, none is more real or right than any of the
1Balmelli et al.,
