SysML Distilled ─ A Brief Guide to the Systems Modeling Language

SysML extends UML with powerful systems engineering capabilities for modeling a far wider spectrum of systems, and effectively capturing all aspects of a system’s design. Now, there’s a go-to reference for everyone who wants to start creating accurate and useful system models with SysML.

Drawing on his pioneering experience creating models for Lockheed Martin and NASA, Lenny Delligatti illuminates SysML’s core components, and shows how to use them even under tight deadlines and other constraints. You needn’t know all of SysML to create effective models: SysML Distilled quickly teaches what you do need to know, and helps you deepen your knowledge incrementally as the need arises. Coverage includes:

• How SysML extends and improves UML, and how to immediately put it to practical use
• How to use SysML as a foundation for Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) or Model-Based Engineering (MBE)
• What to know before you start an SysML modeling project
• How to use key SysML diagrams for block definitions, internal blocks, use cases, activities, sequences, state machines, parametrics, requirements, and packages
• How to use allocations to define cross-cutting relationships
• And much more – including appendices presenting complete SysML notation, identifying changes between SysML versions, and identifying authoritative sources for more information

He served served as a software engineer on the Nomad project at CMU's Field Robotics Center, designing and developing the Sensor Manager module for the Nomad Autonomous Rover. He wrote a technical paper, “Specification and Role of the Sensor Manager in the Science/Autonomy System,” which was later published and archived at the CMUS Robotics Institute. He has served as an embedded software engineer on the Aircraft Simulation Program (ASP) at Lockheed Martin, building real-time operating system (RTOS) kernels for NASA’s fleet of Gulfstream II Space Shuttle simulators. He currently serves as a systems engineer on the Facilities Development and Operations Contract (FDOC) at Lockheed Martin, creating SysML models for NASA’s Mission Control Center: 21st Century (MCC-21) project at Johnson Space Center. In his role as FDOC’s design methodologist and MBSE champion, he has created and delivered 265 hours of training to a team of 241 engineers on the topics of SysML, UML, MBSE, and modeling tools. He provided an additional 35 hours of comprehensive SysML training, enabling 17 FDOC engineers to earn the OCSMP certification. He delivered MBSE and SysML presentations at an INCOSE Texas Gulf Coast chapter meeting and the 2012 AIAA Technical Symposium at Johnson Space Center.

In addition to the technical domain expertise that he acquired as an engineer, he also received formal training in pedagogy and earned a license to teach mathematics in the State of Virginia. He served four years as a high school mathematics teacher and was the mathematics department head in the Fairfax County Public Schools system. This experience served him well as a Lockheed Martin trainer and makes him particularly well suited to write SysML Distilled with a structure and style that facilitates learning. His experience as an engineer and a teacher—coupled with my OCSMP Advanced certification, his technical degrees, and his active connections to other modeling specialists in industry—make him ideally qualified to write SysML Distilled.