Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK)
Welcome to SEBoK v. 2.14
The SEBoK provides a guide to the key knowledge sources and references of systems engineering organized and explained to assist a wide variety of individuals. It is a living product, accepting community input continuously, with regular refreshes and updates. The SEBoK is not a compendium but instead references existing literature.
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the full life cycle of successful product, service and enterprise systems. It includes problem discovery and formulation, solution definition and realization, and operational use, sustainment, and disposal. It can be applied to single-problem situations or to the management of multiple interventions in commercial or public enterprises. Those new to systems engineering can find introductory articles which provide an overview of systems engineering, place it in historical context, and discuss its economic value in Part 1 of this body of knowledge.Please support the SEBoK Sponsors and the Governance and Editorial Boards, who help make SEBoK possible!
What's New?
The SEBoK Editorial Board has introduced version 2.14 with a comprehensive refresh of the Systems Science Knowledge Area—adding eight new articles, revising foundational content, and strengthening coverage of complexity, structure, and scientific context—alongside updates to systems engineering standards articles, alignment with the latest PMBOK, and a set of general improvements to content quality, consistency, and platform infrastructure.
New articles are highlighted in the left-hand outline, in the SEBoK Table of Contents, and are elaborated below.
We welcome you to Get Involved with SEBoK!
Part 2
The Systems Science knowledge area (KA) has been significantly refreshed and updated with eight new articles, two revamped articles, and explainer videos provided for several articles. This KA provides a guide to some of the major developments in systems science, which is an transdisciplinary field of science that studies the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and engineering. The articles included are:
- From Nature's Patterns to Systems Science - New Article
- History and Foundations of Systems Science - Renamed Article, was "History of Systems Science"
- Worldviews and Philosophies of Systemness - New Article
- Patterns and Principles in Systems Science - New Article
- Structure, Identity, and Function in Systems - New Article
- Emergence and Complexity - Integrated and revised from existing articles - "Emergence" and "Complexity"
- System Dynamics and Control - New Article
- Information, Organization, and Entropy in Systems - New Article
- Systems, Levels, and Holarchy - New Article
- Systems Science and the Scientific Enterprise - New Article
Part 3
- New article Evolution of Systems Engineering Standards created from the existing Why Standards? article.
- Renamed "Alignment and Comparison of Systems Engineering Standards" article to Harmonization of Systems Engineering Standards
Part 6
- The INCOSE PM-SE Working Group updated the article, An Overview of the PMBOK® Guide, reflecting the latest version 8 of the PMBoK.
General Updates
The INCOSE logo has been updated, spelling corrections, acronym corrections, repairing broken links, and a link to the SEBoK Style Guide has been added to the Get Involved page. From an operational perspective, the underlying MediaWiki version has been updated to LTS Version 1.43 from 1.39. Each Knowledge Area has been adjusted to remove duplicate article lists within that KA, as that section is now programmatically generated.
SEBoK Organization
The SEBoK is a guide to the broad scope of SE-related knowledge. The core of this is tested and proven knowledge that has been developed through practice, documented, reviewed, and discussed by the SE community. In addition, the SEBoK also covers some of the emerging aspects of SE practice, such as Systems of Systems, Agile Life Cycle approaches and Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE).
Systems engineering has its roots in the fundamentals, principles, and models of foundational systems sciences, and associated management and engineering sciences. It is effective systems engineering processes are applied within a managed life cycle working with a number of other management, engineering, and specialist disciplines. While traditionally applied to product development, systems engineering can also be applied to service and enterprise systems. As systems engineering is a collaborative approach, working with other engineering and management disciplines and specialties, it relies on competencies at the individual and team levels and appropriate structure and governance at organizational levels.
Starting from this basic view of the scope of knowledge relevant to SE, the SEBoK is organized into 8 parts as shown in Figure 1. Click on Figure 1 to navigate to any part of the SEBoK.
The SEBoK includes a glossary and a list of recommended references. The main content of the SEBoK can be downloaded as a PDF for offline access if desired.
SEBoK Governance
The SEBoK is overseen by the Governing Board appointed by the stewards, who oversee the SEBoK Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board. The stewards contribute resources to manage the SEBoK wiki, support new releases, and encourage SEBoK adoption. Volunteer authors from the worldwide SE community continue to propose and create new content. Other volunteers review that new content. The stewards are INCOSE, the IEEE Systems Council, and Stevens Institute of Technology.
 |
 |
 | |
Contact us at [email protected].
