Concept of Operations - Essay Example

The Concept of Operations and the System Development Lifecycle A cncept of operations, also demoted as CONOPS can be described as a document that details the user’s view or opinion of a system that is under consideration. In this document, elements such as the objectives and the mission of the organization of the user are analyzed, and this forms the basis of the communication of the characteristics of the proposed system to the relevant people. For example, analysis of the concept of operations offers a conceptual perspective of the system which includes the architecture of operation and a block diagram illustrating the flow of functions.

The systems development lifecycle starts with the product plan, followed by the phase deliverables, the concept development, the requirements definition, the preliminary design, and goes all the way to project completion. Therefore, prior to preliminary and detail design steps, it is important that the requirements of the system are defined in line with the concept being developed.A concept of operations thus outlines these requirements by incorporating the user’s views or ideas. It means that any systems engineer needs to address these requirements as being the functional concepts, as well as being the perspectives of the system users and customers.

The CONOPs should ensure that components that are less important are either done away with or minimized. The most common critical aspects in SDLC include the current system that the client needs to overhaul, the reasons for a new system, a detailed explanation of the proposed system, and the operational factors of the system by the user, both external and internal. In this light, analysis of CONOPs ensures that the operational needs of the user are addressed without necessarily getting lost in detailed technical aspects.

This helps in meeting the set timelines of the project implementation.Works CitedKay, Russell. System Development Life Cycle. Computer World, 05 May 2012. Web. 06 March 2015.