Agile Systems Engineering with SysML v2 and AI
- 2nd Edition - October 1, 2026
- Latest edition
- Author: Bruce Powel Douglass
- Language: English
Agile Systems Engineering with SysML v2 and AI, Second Edition presents a practical vision of systems engineering in which requirements, structure, behavior, and analysis are… Read more
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Agile Systems Engineering with SysML v2 and AI, Second Edition presents a practical vision of systems engineering in which requirements, structure, behavior, and analysis are captured as precise engineering data—while still addressing the “big system” concerns of safety, security, reliability, privacy, and performance in an agile context. World-renowned author and speaker Dr. Bruce Powel Douglass shows how agile methods, model-based systems engineering (MBSE), and artificial intelligence (AI), work together to reduce ambiguity, expose defects earlier, and sustain end-to-end traceability from stakeholder intent to verification evidence.
This edition goes beyond concepts by providing usable, repeatable workflows for modern programs—covering incremental, agile, and DevSecOps-oriented lifecycles and the concrete process steps and gates that make them executable in practice. Rather than treating modeling as documentation, the book treats SysML v2 as a semantic backbone for capturing requirements, architecture, interfaces, behaviors, constraints, and verification intent in one coherent source of truth.
New to this edition is an introduction to SysML v2 and an entire chapter on AI and modern MBSE, showing where AI assistants provide leverage, how to apply quality-control gates to keep outputs trustworthy, and how to integrate AI into real engineering workflows without surrendering correctness. Each chapter includes AI prompt patterns for MBSE—ready-to-use prompt structures for generating SysML v2 model elements, extracting and normalizing requirements from external sources, reconciling terminology, and reviewing models against project rules and acceptance criteria. Throughout, Douglass equips systems engineers with concrete methods to prevent specification defects, improve system quality, and reduce rework—so teams can move faster and build with greater confidence
This edition goes beyond concepts by providing usable, repeatable workflows for modern programs—covering incremental, agile, and DevSecOps-oriented lifecycles and the concrete process steps and gates that make them executable in practice. Rather than treating modeling as documentation, the book treats SysML v2 as a semantic backbone for capturing requirements, architecture, interfaces, behaviors, constraints, and verification intent in one coherent source of truth.
New to this edition is an introduction to SysML v2 and an entire chapter on AI and modern MBSE, showing where AI assistants provide leverage, how to apply quality-control gates to keep outputs trustworthy, and how to integrate AI into real engineering workflows without surrendering correctness. Each chapter includes AI prompt patterns for MBSE—ready-to-use prompt structures for generating SysML v2 model elements, extracting and normalizing requirements from external sources, reconciling terminology, and reviewing models against project rules and acceptance criteria. Throughout, Douglass equips systems engineers with concrete methods to prevent specification defects, improve system quality, and reduce rework—so teams can move faster and build with greater confidence
- Integrates agile methods, SysML v2, and AI assistance into a single, practical systems-engineering approach.
- Treats systems engineering data as a durable engineering asset: structured, analyzable, verifiable, and resilient to change.
- Provides an end-to-end set of repeatable workflows (stakeholder needs → system requirements → analysis → architecture → handoff).
- Uses SysML v2 textual notation alongside graphical views to make models easier to review, diff/merge, validate, and reuse.
- Builds dependability into the workflow (safety, reliability, security, privacy) as model-connected requirements, constraints, and verification intent—not an afterthought.
- Includes AI prompt patterns to accelerate drafting, normalization, consistency checking, and initial model generation, with explicit acceptance criteria and responsible-use guidance.
- Emphasizes early verification planning (including pass/fail criteria you can actually check) and traceability from requirements to verification intent.
- Treats handoff to downstream engineering as a first-class workflow, packaging requirements, interfaces/contracts, behaviors, and decisions into usable engineering data for SW/EE/ME/test teams.
Software Engineers and Computer Science researchers, as well as System Engineers, particularly those in aerospace, defense, automotive, transportation, and rail.
1. What is Systems Engineering?
1.1 Overview
1.2 Primary roles
1.3 Primary responsibilities
1.4 Key work products
1.5 Systems Engineering Lifecycles
1.5.1 Waterfall
1.5.2 V-Cycle
1.5.3 Model-Based Systems Engineering
1.5.3.1 The Modeling Advantage
1.5.3.2 High-Precision Modeling with SysML and UML
1.5.3.2.1 Properties of good models (scope, intent, purpose, stakeholder, usage, precision, fidelity)
1.5.3.3 Modeling is essential for Agile Systems Engineering
1.5.3.4 Migrating from traditional SE to MBSE
1.5.3.5 The Rules
2. What are Agile Methods and Why Should I Care?
2.1 Applying the Agile Manifesto to Systems Engineering
2.2 Agile Best Practices for Systems Engineering
2.2.1 Incremental development of work products
2.2.2 Continual verification of work products
2.2.3 Executable requirements models
2.2.4 Model-based specification
2.2.5 Continuous dependability assessment
2.2.6 Active project risk management
2.2.7 Model-based hand off to downstream engineering
2.2.8 Dynamic Planning
2.3 Dev Sec Ops
2.3.1 What is Dev Sec Ops and how does it differ from Agile
2.3.2 How do I apply modeling in Dev Sec Ops?
2.3.3 Detailed Dev Sec Ops workflows
3. Brief Introduction to SysML v2
3.1 Principles of good modeling
3.2 Differences between SysML v1 and SysML v2
3.2.1 Requirements and capabilities
3.2.2 Structural Modeling
3.2.3 Computations and analyses
3.2.4 Verification cases
3.3 Key SysML v2 views
3.3.1 Textual Notation
3.3.2 General View
3.3.3 Interconnection View
3.3.4 Action Flow View
3.3.5 State Transition View
3.3.6 Sequence View
3.3.7 Geometry View
3.3.8 Grid View
3.3.9 Browser View
3.4 Minimal SysML Profile – 80% of the capability with 20% of the complexity
3.5 Organizing your models for systems engineering
4. Agile Stakeholder Requirements Engineering
4.1 Making requirements engineering agile - overview
4.2 Identification of stakeholder needs
4.3 Dependability analysis
4.3.1 Hazard analysis
4.3.2 Fault Tree Analysis
4.3.3 FMEA and FMECA
4.3.4 Model-Based Security Analysis
4.4 Performance analysis & non-functional requirements
4.5 Mapping requirements to Use Cases and User stories
4.6 Creating the system requirements
4.6.1 Functional requirements are verbs
4.6.2 Non-functional requirements are adverbs
4.7 The importance of traceability
4.8 When to stop
5. System Requirements Specification & Functional Analysis
5.1 Making functional analysis agile - overview
5.2 Why are my requirements so inadequate?
5.3 Functional Analysis – finding the missing requirements
5.4 Scenario Analysis
5.5 Control Flow Analysis
5.6 Data Flow Analysis
5.7 Ensuring good requirements with executable requirements
5.8 Updating the dependability requirements
5.9 Requirements consistency analysis
5.10 When to stop
6. Architectural Tradeoff Analysis
6.1 Make trade studies agile - overview
6.2 What is the Systems architecture?
6.3 Architectural evaluation and tradeoffs
7. Architectural Design
7.1 Making architectural design agile - overview
7.2 Creating the systems architecture
7.3 Allocation of requirements
7.3.1 In the small – operational contracts
7.3.2 In the large – use case decomposition
7.3.3 Performance allocation
7.4 Updating the dependability analysis
7.5 Verifying your architectural model through simulation/execution
7.6 When to stop
8. Handoff to Downstream Engineering and Test
8.1 Handing off to Downstream engineering in an agile way
8.1.1 1-shot Hand off
8.1.2 Incremental Hand off
8.2 Allocation to engineering disciplines
8.3 Specifying cross-discipline interfaces
8.4 Transforming logical interfaces to physical reality
8.5 Allocation to Verification and Validation Testing
8.6 Moving on to Development Engineering
9. Summary and Overview
9.1 Overview of the Agile Lifecycle
9.2 Overview of the MDDSO Lifecycle
9.3 Table mapping practices, tasks, and work products
9.4 FAQs
1.1 Overview
1.2 Primary roles
1.3 Primary responsibilities
1.4 Key work products
1.5 Systems Engineering Lifecycles
1.5.1 Waterfall
1.5.2 V-Cycle
1.5.3 Model-Based Systems Engineering
1.5.3.1 The Modeling Advantage
1.5.3.2 High-Precision Modeling with SysML and UML
1.5.3.2.1 Properties of good models (scope, intent, purpose, stakeholder, usage, precision, fidelity)
1.5.3.3 Modeling is essential for Agile Systems Engineering
1.5.3.4 Migrating from traditional SE to MBSE
1.5.3.5 The Rules
2. What are Agile Methods and Why Should I Care?
2.1 Applying the Agile Manifesto to Systems Engineering
2.2 Agile Best Practices for Systems Engineering
2.2.1 Incremental development of work products
2.2.2 Continual verification of work products
2.2.3 Executable requirements models
2.2.4 Model-based specification
2.2.5 Continuous dependability assessment
2.2.6 Active project risk management
2.2.7 Model-based hand off to downstream engineering
2.2.8 Dynamic Planning
2.3 Dev Sec Ops
2.3.1 What is Dev Sec Ops and how does it differ from Agile
2.3.2 How do I apply modeling in Dev Sec Ops?
2.3.3 Detailed Dev Sec Ops workflows
3. Brief Introduction to SysML v2
3.1 Principles of good modeling
3.2 Differences between SysML v1 and SysML v2
3.2.1 Requirements and capabilities
3.2.2 Structural Modeling
3.2.3 Computations and analyses
3.2.4 Verification cases
3.3 Key SysML v2 views
3.3.1 Textual Notation
3.3.2 General View
3.3.3 Interconnection View
3.3.4 Action Flow View
3.3.5 State Transition View
3.3.6 Sequence View
3.3.7 Geometry View
3.3.8 Grid View
3.3.9 Browser View
3.4 Minimal SysML Profile – 80% of the capability with 20% of the complexity
3.5 Organizing your models for systems engineering
4. Agile Stakeholder Requirements Engineering
4.1 Making requirements engineering agile - overview
4.2 Identification of stakeholder needs
4.3 Dependability analysis
4.3.1 Hazard analysis
4.3.2 Fault Tree Analysis
4.3.3 FMEA and FMECA
4.3.4 Model-Based Security Analysis
4.4 Performance analysis & non-functional requirements
4.5 Mapping requirements to Use Cases and User stories
4.6 Creating the system requirements
4.6.1 Functional requirements are verbs
4.6.2 Non-functional requirements are adverbs
4.7 The importance of traceability
4.8 When to stop
5. System Requirements Specification & Functional Analysis
5.1 Making functional analysis agile - overview
5.2 Why are my requirements so inadequate?
5.3 Functional Analysis – finding the missing requirements
5.4 Scenario Analysis
5.5 Control Flow Analysis
5.6 Data Flow Analysis
5.7 Ensuring good requirements with executable requirements
5.8 Updating the dependability requirements
5.9 Requirements consistency analysis
5.10 When to stop
6. Architectural Tradeoff Analysis
6.1 Make trade studies agile - overview
6.2 What is the Systems architecture?
6.3 Architectural evaluation and tradeoffs
7. Architectural Design
7.1 Making architectural design agile - overview
7.2 Creating the systems architecture
7.3 Allocation of requirements
7.3.1 In the small – operational contracts
7.3.2 In the large – use case decomposition
7.3.3 Performance allocation
7.4 Updating the dependability analysis
7.5 Verifying your architectural model through simulation/execution
7.6 When to stop
8. Handoff to Downstream Engineering and Test
8.1 Handing off to Downstream engineering in an agile way
8.1.1 1-shot Hand off
8.1.2 Incremental Hand off
8.2 Allocation to engineering disciplines
8.3 Specifying cross-discipline interfaces
8.4 Transforming logical interfaces to physical reality
8.5 Allocation to Verification and Validation Testing
8.6 Moving on to Development Engineering
9. Summary and Overview
9.1 Overview of the Agile Lifecycle
9.2 Overview of the MDDSO Lifecycle
9.3 Table mapping practices, tasks, and work products
9.4 FAQs
- Edition: 2
- Latest edition
- Published: October 1, 2026
- Language: English
BD
Bruce Powel Douglass
Embedded Software Methodologist. Triathlete. Systems engineer. Contributor to UML and SysML specifications. Writer. Black Belt. Neuroscientist. Classical guitarist. High school dropout. Bruce Powel Douglass, who has a doctorate in neurocybernetics from the USD Medical School, has over 35 years of experience developing safety-critical real-time applications in a variety of hard real-time environments. He is the author of over 5700 book pages from a number of technical books including Real-Time UML, Real-Time UML Workshop for Embedded Systems, Real-Time Design Patterns, Doing Hard Time, Real-Time Agility, and Design Patterns for Embedded Systems in C. He is the Chief Evangelist at IBM Rational, where he is a thought leader in the systems space and consulting with and mentors IBM customers all over the world.
Affiliations and expertise
Chief Evangelist, IBM Internet of Things, Fairfax, VA, USA