Defining life cycles

This section introduces the main concepts associated with life cycles. These concepts will be described using the modeling techniques that have been introduced so far in this book, specifically by expanding the existing MBSE ontology to include the life cycle concepts. As the MBSE ontology expands, the scope of the overall ontology will increase to include more concepts, but, very importantly, it will be consistent with everything else described so far in the book.

One of the key concepts associated with any life cycle is that of the stage, and this will form the start point of the discussion in the next section, which describes the key concepts associated with life cycles.

Defining life cycle concepts

There are several main concepts and associated terminology that need to be understood in order to perform systems engineering successfully. These main concepts are shown in the following diagram, which shows the first version of the ontology definition...