CSEP key terms

An integrated set of interacting elements organized to achieve defined objectives, considered as a whole within a defined boundary and environment.

The agreed demarcation separating what is inside the system being engineered from its environment and external interfaces, fixing scope for analysis and design.

A property or capability that appears only when components operate together, and cannot be predicted from examining any single element in isolation.

A set of independently managed, operationally independent systems whose combined behavior delivers capability greater than any constituent alone, requiring cross-system engineering coordination.

The staged progression of a system from concept through development, production, operation, support, and retirement, used to plan technical work and decision gates.

A framework describing how phases, activities, and reviews relate over a system's life, such as waterfall, incremental, or evolutionary development approaches.

Any person or organization with an interest in, influence on, or dependence upon a system, including users, acquirers, operators, maintainers, regulators, and affected third parties.

A statement that identifies a capability, characteristic, or constraint the system must satisfy, expressed so that compliance can be objectively demonstrated.

A requirement describing what the system must do: the behaviors, transformations, inputs, and outputs it must produce under stated conditions.

A requirement constraining how well the system performs rather than what it does, covering qualities such as performance, reliability, safety, security, and maintainability.

A requirement created by decomposing or refining a higher-level requirement during design, traceable upward to its parent and downward to its implementation.

The recorded linkage among requirements, their sources, design elements, and verification evidence, enabling impact analysis and proof of complete coverage.

A description of how the system will be employed in its intended environment, including missions, users, scenarios, and interactions with external systems.

The fundamental organization of a system embodied in its elements, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution.

A specification of the conventions for constructing and using one kind of architecture view, addressing a particular set of stakeholder concerns such as function, data, or deployment.

The assignment of requirements, functions, or behaviors to architectural elements, components, or human operators, establishing responsibility for satisfying them.

A shared boundary across which two or more system elements exchange matter, energy, or information, defined by its physical, logical, and protocol characteristics.

A controlled document specifying the characteristics, responsibilities, and constraints governing an interface between systems or components, agreed by the parties on each side.

The decomposition of system behavior into subordinate functions and their logical relationships, forming the basis for allocating functions to physical elements.

Confirmation by objective evidence that a system or element meets its specified requirements, answering whether the item was built right according to its specification.

Confirmation by objective evidence that the system fulfills the needs and intended use of its stakeholders, answering whether the right system was built.

The technique chosen to demonstrate requirement compliance: inspection, analysis, demonstration, or test, selected based on risk, cost, and the nature of the requirement.

A table mapping each requirement to the verification method, procedure, and result that demonstrates its satisfaction, used to prove complete and traceable coverage.

A defined set of preconditions, inputs, actions, and expected results created to exercise a specific requirement or behavior and support a pass or fail judgment.

Re-execution of selected tests after a change to confirm that previously verified behavior remains correct and that no new defects were introduced.

Formal testing conducted by or for the acquirer on delivered items to determine whether contractual requirements are met and the item is acceptable for transition.

An entity designated for configuration management, treated as a single unit for identification, control, status accounting, and audit throughout the life cycle.

The disciplined process of identifying, controlling, status-accounting, and auditing configuration items and their changes across the system life cycle.

An approved, frozen set of configuration documentation that can only be changed through formal change control, serving as the reference for subsequent work.

The designated group that reviews proposed changes to baselined items, assesses impacts, and authorizes, defers, or rejects them.

A structured examination confirming that a configuration item's actual attributes and documentation match its approved configuration identification and requirements.

The continuing process of identifying, analyzing, prioritizing, mitigating, and monitoring uncertainties that could affect technical objectives, cost, or schedule.

A selected parameter tracked during development to reveal whether a system is converging on its performance requirements, with planned values and tolerances.

Structured, milestone-based examinations of technical work products by independent reviewers to assess adequacy, surface risk, and authorize progression.

A structured evaluation comparing alternative solutions against weighted criteria such as cost, performance, risk, and schedule, to support a documented decision.

A hierarchical decomposition of project scope into manageable work packages, providing the framework for planning, estimating, assigning responsibility, and controlling effort.

A top-level diagram showing the system as a single entity, its external interfaces, and the flows exchanged with surrounding systems and actors.

A description of a sequence of interactions between an actor and the system that yields an observable result of value to that actor.