1. Chapter Operations Enchantment Chapter Example
North Texas Chapter, 14-March-2017
Rick Dove, Enchantment Chapter
Program Director, Web Master, Newsletter Editor
BOD member since 2005
President 2015

2. NORTH TEXAS CHAPTER 2017 BOARD
Long S. Dong President, NT Chapter
Anthony Blow VP, Technical Development
Yvonne Bijan, PhD VP, Chapter Development
George Borovina Secretary
Julian Parker Treasurer
Barry Papke Board Member, North Dallas
Don Boyer Director at Large
Mike Dietz Director at Large
Jerrell Stracener, PhD SMU SE Program Liaison
North Texas has 127 INCOSE members – about our size

3.
Prompt maintenance
3-month rolling events
Speaker slides up day of meeting
Speaker recordings up day after
Recordings edited for quality archive
Chapter’s public face
Webmaster takes pride in the work and values the learning experience

5. Enchantment Chapter as Enterprise
Vision: a concise future state or goal.
Organizational encouragement of employee membership.
Membership utilization for professional development.
Mission: simple repeatable rules that lead to the vision.
Rule 1: Provide valued services for member professional development.
Rule 2: Engage previously unengaged members.
Rule 3: Broaden awareness of Chapter value to the community.
Rule 4: Attract new members.
Culture: shared mental models that support the mission
Everybody gets a personal sense of reward in contributing to the mission.
Everybody has a voice that is heard and appreciated.
Everybody comes to learn and improve Chapter effectiveness.
Learning: incremental improvement of the culture and mission.
Experiment with, evaluate, and evolve Chapter services.
Experiment with, evaluate, and evolve operating processes.
Framework per Derek and Laura Cabrera, Systems Thinking Made Simple

6. 2016 Enchantment Chapter Strategic Plan
VISION
Be the professional organization that is the regional focal point for the SE Community of Practice.
MISSION
Provide professional development value to members.
STRATEGIES
Synergistic involvement with regional organizations.
Member professional development opportunities and engagement.
Member-attracting appreciation of Chapter performance.
VALUES
Serving members
Excellence
Integrity
Responsibilities
Goal 1: Director of Outreach
Goal 2: Director of Professional Development
Goal 3: VP, President Elect
Goal 4: President
HISTORY
Established 2003
Bronze Award 2005
Director’s Award 2006
Gold Award 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014
Platinum Award 2015
Reputation GOAL 1
Recognized as the Regional Voice-of-SE
OBJECTIVE
Need: Awareness in the community of INCOSE and Chapter as valued resources.
Intent: Effective member and Chapter involvement with regional organizations.
OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES
Ascertain appropriate regional interests.
Facilitate regional interaction.
Provide regional interaction.
Develop value proposition for chapter and target regional interactions.
Reputation GOAL 2
THE Go-To Place for Professional Development
OBJECTIVE
Need: Local resource for meaningful SE professional development.
Intent: Exposure to SME’s on the theory and practice of leading SE concepts. 
OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES
Ascertain member interests.
Provide in-demand talks/tutorials.
Facilitate member active engagement.
Facilitate INCOSE WG involvement.
Facilitate SEP certification.
Reputation GOAL 3
Member-Rewarding Activities
OBJECTIVE
Need: Opportunities for active engagement with Chapter resources.
Intent: Member-attracting projects and workshops that engage Chapter members.
OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES
Ascertain member interests.
Provide facilitated member active- engagement.
Facilitate INCOSE WG involvement.
Reputation GOAL 4
Reliable and Effective Chapter
OBJECTIVE
Need: Chapter strategic and operational effectiveness.
Intent: Development and execution of goal-achievement Strategic and Operational Plans.
OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES
Planning at Strategic and Operational levels.
Review execution effectiveness of all goals

7. Goal/Activity Map of Chapter Plan
Provide Regional Interaction
3: Member- Rewarding
Activities
Reputation Goals
Activities
Facilitate Regional Interaction 1:
Recognized as
the Regional
Voice-of-SE
Ascertain Member Interests
Provide Facilitated Engagement
Facilitate INCOSE WG Involvement
Ascertain Regional Interests 4:
Reliable &
Effective
Chapter
Provide In-Demand
Talks/Tutorials
Facilitate SEP
Certification
Develop Annual Plans
Review Execution Effectiveness
2: THE
Professional Development
Go-To Place
Bi-directional support lines show “key-only” activity-support.

8. Director’s Value-Based Personal Engagement
Annual 4-hour strategic planning retreat – with President’s straw-man in advance. Eleven 1-hour BOD meetings: pre-lim agenda, final agenda, pre-reading facilitates tight-schedule adherence for timely BOD decisions. Proper by laws and BOD meetings: Robert’s Rules. Timely BOD minutes with traceable decisions and actions. BOD recruitment: for diversity, valued professional development, engagement. Budget and treasury quarterly reviews: operate at break even, maintain reserve. Member communications: effective and kept to a minimum. Criteria-based meeting speaker/topic selections: not who’s available, but who’s appropriate. Criteria-based tutorial leader/topic selections: not who’s available, but who’s appropriate. Tutorial production: two days/year, affordable, supported effectively. Social event production: subsidized, dinner, attractive location/event, networking, recruitment, planned, supported, and implemented effectively. Regional event production: member engagement and professional development, planned, supported and implemented effectively. Newsletter: public face of the Chapter, value to members, and recruitment tool. Web site: public face of the Chapter, value to members, and recruitment tool.

9. Strict Timing on Board Discussion Topics
Example: Chapter BoD Meeting Agenda – April 22, 2015
Pre-reading materials distributed (focuses meeting time on decisions):
Treasurer’s report.
Tutorial survey detail and synopsis.
Possible concepts for July press event at Chapter social.
Goal 4 review high points.
Circle Award submission and status.
16:45 Convene
Intros for benefit of David Long and James Plimpton.
17:00 Review actions and approve minutes of last meeting (Ann Hodges).
17:10 Treasurer’s Q1 quarterly (Mary Compton).
17:15 Plan performance – rotating Goal/Activity reviews.
Review Goal 4 performance to date (Rick Dove).
17:30 Old Business (not already covered in last-meeting minutes review) – actions TBD.
Schedule Bylaws review and revision consideration (Bob Pierson).
17:35 New Business – actions TBD.
Tutorial Survey status and decision for Q4 (Mike Gruer).
Circle Awards – status, plans, Go/No decision (Rick Dove).
July Social & Press Event (discuss and decide).
Select next meeting Goal-performance for review (Goal 1?)
Other Discussion, time permitting
Goal 1: Plan to ascertain interests and identify outreach targets (Heidi Hahn)
UTEP student division status (Eric Smith)
Consider local conference/workshop for 2016/17 (Rick Dove)
18:00 Adjourn to dinner and discussion at El Pinto with David Long.

10. Circle Awards
Went after Circle awards initially as “good-chapter” guidance.
But in 2012/13 we thought:
Award criteria had no affect on what the Chapter actually did.
What got done was only because somebody wanted to do it, not because someone else thought it ought to be done.
What got done was good accomplishment for Chapter mission.
Felt it was micro management by INCOSE Central with misplaced values, many categories of insufficient interest to engage quality leadership.
We used it simply to get a trophy???
Conclusion: A lot of work and frustration for no real value.
Now we think differently, and use the award criteria for purpose:
Makes us reflect on what was actually done, and appreciate who’s engaged.
Provides ideas for consideration.
Good VP prep and thought stimulation for upcoming Presidential year.
VP is responsible for submission, with assistance BOD-wide.
President has prior experience, assists heavily, and owns the award as legacy.

11. Criteria for Speakers Appropriateness Requirements:
Relevant to our NM membership broadly.
Expected to draw meeting attendees.
Satisfies professional-development objectives of the chapter’s strategic plan.
To this end we take proactive initiative to:
Develop a list of known good speakers with topics we want to hear;
Develop a list of “appropriate” topics we want to hear about;
Develop a list of working groups we want to hear about;
Ask the membership for things they’d like to hear about for consideration;
Accept unsolicited suggestions from potential speakers for consideration.
Program Director provides candidate suggestions to the BOD for informal consensus (not a formal BOD vote), accepts responsibility for quality of final selections, and exercises a sharp eye on “appropriateness” criteria.
Slots for a quarter committed before the quarter starts so they can be announced in the quarterly newsletter, with general rolling three months committed.  
We avoid using the same speaker more than once in a given year.
Reach-out for attractive/appropriate speakers and topics:
Seek appropriate IS paper presentations.
Monitor speaker topics at other chapters.
Seek Working Group presentations by chairs/co-chairs.
Monitor MIT SE webinars, SoSECIE webinars, INCOSE webinars, et al.
Call on appropriate personal contacts.

12. ============================
Tutorials
Early on, the Chapter used tutorials to:
attract new members,
provide value to existing members, and
build a treasury financial reserve.
Now, the Chapter uses tutorials to:
provide professional-development value to existing members,
appeal to less-experienced SEs with a basic tutorial,
appeal to more-experienced SEs with an advanced tutorial, and
roughly break-even on annual tutorial cost/income – one tutorial often subsidizes the other.
============================
Full-time students can attend for free.
We have moved to electronic handouts to save production cost.
We have moved from PayPal to EventBrite to reduce registration effort.
We now alternate two people capable of quality-event production.
We don’t like overt or intentional product or service solicitation.
We general schedule two tutorial-days per year.

13. Example: May 19 – Agile Risk Management (Rick Dove) $125 Members, $175 non-members, $0 students
To be effective, projects/processes/products (all viewed as systems) have to mate well with their operational environments. Operational environments are not static, they react to disturbances and evolve with opportunity and whimsy. Inserting a system into an environment is a disturbance. Sustaining a system in an environment entails compatible evolution. The environment is the problem space the system will occupy. Understanding the requirements for a compatible-to-the-space solution is best done before system functional requirements get too far ahead and shape an incompatible path. But how do we characterize the environment as a dynamic problem space and develop solution-response requirements, sufficient to guide the design of risk-mitigating agility? Characterizing the problem space is an ill-structured problem. It cannot be expressed in numbers and equations, nor solved with algorithms. This tutorial provides heuristic frameworks for developing useful characterizations of the problem space, and for developing risk-mitigating requirements for the solution space; grounded with real examples and in-class application practice. Given enough understanding about the problem, effective solution requirements and features becomes (almost) obvious. The problem shapes and constrains effective solution, but only to the extent that we understand it. Participants will receive: a) Instruction: a series of heuristic tools will be introduced. b) Examples: how others have characterized their dynamic problem spaces. c) Practice: engagement in application exercises. d) Reference material: soft-copy course notes and case studies on the examples.
Features to be Learned:
System goal-development framework
Environment characterization framework
Reality factors framework
Solution response-requirements framework
Advantages to be Obtained:
Context-driven top-level goals
Problem space illumination
Risk-response needs established
Traceable solution design decisions
Benefits to be Realized:
System environment compatibility
Projects that mitigate evolving risk
Processes that deliver on purpose
Products that are sustainable
The course is aimed at:
Beginners to experienced SE practitioners
Engineers of all disciplines
Project managers
System requirements developers

14. 2016 Chapter Activities – Year in Review
Eleven well-attended monthly Board Meetings, and one strategic planning retreat. Ten monthly chapter meetings with SME speakers from across the US, one from Germany. Experimental monthly Chapter morning meeting time (speaker from Germany). Two evening networking socials (July and December) Eight 60-minute, edited, chapter-meeting speaker recordings posted on public Chapter website. Chapter meetings announced to seven other (by request) Chapters and attended by some of their members. Chapter website timely maintenance with 3-month-rolling event notices and professional-development archived material. Four quarterly Newsletters, promoting SEP certification, working group reviews, women in systems engineering, and professional development material. One two-day tutorial on Handbook review as SEP-certification preparation. Successful experimental 2-day Socorro Systems Summit with eight collaborative-topic workshops selected by survey, jointly sponsored with New Mexico Tech, utilizing five NMTech students to assist (free attendance). Request by Garry Roedler to write up and socialize the Systems Summit ConOps for use INCOSE-wide. Seven students from Univ. of Texas El Paso had 2-nights rooms paid for by Chapter and free attendance to attend Socorro Systems Summit, required to do advance research on Summit topics. Well-attended EWLSE diner meeting at Socorro Systems Summit. Request by outgoing INCOSE president David Long to provide Newsletters and Ambassador presentation (to White Sands) for 25th anniversary Chapter products archive. Half-day outreach meeting at Univ. of Texas El Paso (February), with documented plans. Half-day outreach meeting at New Mexico Tech (Socorro, NM, February), with documented plans. Two presentations made on-site at Southern and Central Arizona Chapters. SE presentation to students made at NM Tech (February). SE presentation made at Univ. of Texas El Paso IMSE Day conference (April). Various membership surveys to determine member preferences and satisfactions. Very active Chapter-supported student Chapter at Univ. of Texas El Paso. Received platinum award in 2016 for 2015 performance.