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CHAPTER 10 SYSTEM ENGINEERING 269

10.15. Are there characteristics of a system that cannot be established during sys-
tem engineering activities? Describe the characteristics, if any, and explain why a
consideration of them must be delayed until later engineering steps.

10.16. Are there situations in which formal system specification can be abbreviated
or eliminated entirely? Explain.

FURTHER READINGS AND INFORMATION SOURCES
Relatively few books have been published on system engineering in recent years.
Among those that have appeared are
Blanchard, B.S., System Engineering Management, 2nd ed., Wiley, 1997.
Rechtin, E. and M.W. Maier, The Art of Systems Architecting, CRC Press, 1996.
Weiss, D., et al., Software Product-Line Engineering, Addison-Wesley, 1999.
Books by Armstrong and Sage (Introduction to Systems Engineering, Wiley, 1997),
Martin (Systems Engineering Guidebook, CRC Press, 1996), Wymore (Model-Based Sys-
tems Engineering, CRC Press, 1993), Lacy (System Engineering Management, McGraw-
Hill, 1992), Aslaksen and Belcher (Systems Engineering, Prentice-Hall, 1992), Athey
(Systematic Systems Approach, Prentice-Hall, 1982), and Blanchard and Fabrycky (Sys-
tems Engineering and Analysis, Prentice-Hall, 1981) present the system engineering
process (with a distinct engineering emphasis) and provide worthwhile guidance.
In recent years, information engineering texts have been replaced by books that
focus on business process engineering. Scheer (Business Process Engineering: Refer-
ence Models for Industrial Enterprises, Springer-Verlag, 1998) describes business process
modeling methods for enterprise-wide information systems. Lozinsky (Enterprise-
wide Software Solutions: Integration Strategies and Practices, Addison-Wesley, 1998)
addresses the use of software packages as a solution that allows a company to migrate
from legacy systems to modern business processes. Martin (Information Engineering,
3 volumes, Prentice-Hall, 1989, 1990, 1991) presents a comprehensive discussion of
information engineering topics. Books by Hares [HAR93], Spewak [SPE93], and Flynn
and Fragoso-Diaz (Information Modeling: An International Perspective, Prentice-Hall,
1996) also treat the subject in detail.
Davis and Yen (The Information System Consultant's Handbook: Systems Analysis
and Design, CRC Press, 1998) present encyclopedic coverage of system analysis and
design issues in the information systems domain. An excellent IEEE tutorial by Thayer
and Dorfman [THA97] discusses the interrelationship between system and software-
level requirements analysis issues. A earlier volume by the same authors (Standards,
Guidelines and Examples: System and Software Requirements Engineering, IEEE Com-
puter Society Press, 1990) presents a comprehensive discussion of standards and
guidelines for analysis work.
For those readers actively involved in systems work or interested in a more sophis-
ticated treatment of the topic, Gerald Weinberg's books (An Introduction to General