Prior advances in systems engineering (SE) theory were instrumental in defining the discipline and its tools, but are limited in perspective. The SE community needs new theoretical advances to address its existing and emerging sociotechnical challenges. This communication paper is a product of an NSF/SERC/INCOSE funded workshop on theory building in SE with a focus on the use of abstraction and elaboration. The overarching goals of the workshop were twofold. First, to illustrate the nuances and complexities of the theory building process with an emphasis on developing theory about the SE discipline rather than about a particular system of interest. The second goal was to stimulate a new wave of SE theory by providing a set of frames that could be used for formal theory articulation in follow‐up research. The workshop focused on abstraction and elaboration due to their richness and pervasiveness in SE and investigated the concept in two interrelated contexts: (a) the social coordination of design teams and (b) its strategic use during system design. For each research context, we offer a structured guideline for theorizing, and provide an understanding and framing of some of the generalized abstraction and elaboration uses in SE. Research frames articulated in this workshop could serve as the first step for future research on SE theory, which necessitates hypotheses generation, data collection, validation, and refinement.

中文翻译：

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推进系统工程理论的跨学科策略：抽象和阐述的案例

系统工程（SE）理论的先前进步对定义该学科及其工具很有帮助，但前景有限。SE社区需要新的理论进展来应对其现有和新兴的社会技术挑战。该交流论文是由NSF / SERC / INCOSE资助的SE理论构建研讨会的产品，该研讨会的重点是抽象和细节的使用。研讨会的总体目标是双重的。首先，说明理论构建过程的细微差别和复杂性，重点在于发展有关SE学科而不是特定利益体系的理论。第二个目标是通过提供一组可用于后续研究的形式理论表达的框架来激发SE理论的新潮流。由于其在SE中的丰富性和普遍性，该研讨会着重于抽象和详细说明，并在两个相互关联的上下文中研究了该概念：（a）设计团队的社会协调，以及（b）在系统设计期间的战略使用。对于每种研究背景，我们都提供了理论化的结构化指南，并提供了了解和构架SE中的一些广义抽象和详细说明用法。本次研讨会阐明的研究框架可以作为未来关于SE理论的研究的第一步，这需要假设的产生，数据收集，验证和完善。