From Models to Stories

Abstract

As systems continue to grow in scope, scale, and complexity, the ability to model, analyze, and design them has become a critical systems engineering challenge. Over the past decade and a half, several model-based approaches (e.g., SysML, OPM) have been developed and employed for modeling and analyzing complex systems. These methods require familiarity with specialized engineering notation on the part of stakeholders. Unfamiliar with these modeling notations, nontechnical stakeholders are unable to contribute to upfront engineering increasing the risk of extraneous design iterations and rework that invariably lead to schedule delays and cost over-runs. Today, there is an even bigger challenge given that systems need to adapt to changing operational environments and new regulations, while having the requisite flexibility to seamlessly and opportunistically integrate emerging, new, and high-payoff technologies. In this chapter, I showed that by transforming system models into system stories all stakeholders can be meaningfully engaged. Specifically, the different stakeholders can interactively execute their own stories in virtual worlds and thereby increase their understanding and contribution to upfront engineering. I called this model-based interactive storytelling (MBIS).

MBIS begins with authoring partially scripted stories about complex systems. Stakeholders can then interact with those partially scripted stories to explore complex system behaviors and change propagation paths. In the process, they can uncover system hotspots and unintended consequences. The central idea behind MBIS is to allow stakeholders to “experience” the behavior of complex systems using stakeholder-specific lenses, and with facilities to rewind and replay stories with specific “injects.” During replay, they can pause and resume at key points, and conditionally branch and loop to explore system behavior further. These capabilities serve to not only engage stakeholders but allow them to create a mental picture of system behavior in different contexts. MBIS impacts complex systems engineering in a number of ways. These include uncovering hidden interactions and dependencies within the system, ensuring that all stakeholders contribute to collaborative design especially in upfront systems engineering, and exploring alternate futures with different technologies, assumptions, initial conditions, and CONOPS.

“Telling purposeful stories is interactive. It’s not a monolog. Ultimately, purposeful tellers must surrender control of their stories, creating a gap for the listener(s) to willingly cross in order to take ownership.” – Peter Guber, entrepreneur, educator, author