Information Integration for Concurrent Engineering (IICE) Compendium of Methods Report

For all the rapid advances in computer hardware and specific software technology, enterprise engineering, reengineering, and enterprise integration efforts continue to lack effective, widely understood methods for engineering large-scale information systems. Diverse methods are needed to engineer systems that exhibit desirable life-cycle characteristics e.g., flexibility, responsiveness, scalability, maintainability, ease of use, integration, performance and for engaging teams of people in critical life-cycle system development activities. Integration Definition IDEF methods, a key product of the IICE program, provide easy-to-use techniques and standard languages of communication that promote good engineering discipline. This report summarizes new IDEF developments toward establishing reliable methods for business constraint discovery IDEF9, design rationale capture IDEF6, human system interaction design IDEF8, and network design IDEF14. For each method, the conceptual foundations, relevance, issues, and recommended follow-on development activities are discussed.