The agile project management community talks about increasing value. But what is value and how is it increased? They don't really say - just that agile processes address the value discussion.
Here's a paper that discusses some of the issues around this topic.
"On Customer Value and Improvement in Product Development Processes," Tyson R. Browning, Systems Engineering, Vol 6., No. 1, 2003.
One of the tools described in the paper - Design Structure Matrix - provides a powerful visualization method for complex systems engineering optimizations. There are tools at the DSM web site that work against C++ and Java code bases to identify the architectural mis-matches. We're several layers above that problem, but the idea that architecture - be it code or spacecraft - can be assessed for consistency and structure is very useful for an Integrated Product Team approach.
