System Engineering (SE)

Historically, we used SE in reference to two distinct concepts1:

 

  1. Systematic Engineering: repeatable processes for which management 2 has a rational expectation that individual skills and expertise do not dominate their ability to audit a project’s technical status3. This notion derives from the reality that Engineering typically doesn’t own the money it spends, and the people who DO own the money have the right supervise how it is spent4. SE practices provide a framework in which they can move a group of external auditors from project to project and that such auditors will be able to grasp the flow of the developmental work with minimal project-specific learning curve.
  2. Engineering of the System5: a technical discipline ensuring that the various components are characterized appropriately and evaluated coherently throughout all phases of development. It integrates core aspects of Requirements development, Configuration Identification and Classification, Verification, Analysis (not all of which is for the purpose of verification), Test (not all of which is for the purpose of verification), and Design, including Drawing Types and Applications.

A good System Engineer applies the concepts of the first definition to achieve the second. A bad one attends only to the first definition, remaining ignorant and incapable of the second and, therefore, blows the first.

Footnotes
  1. Brian Mar (an NCOSE/INCOSE founder) referred to this discussion as one of “process vs. product”.[↩]
  2. In this context, “management” includes customer management, and “technical status” includes the final compliance with requirements.[↩]
  3. In the very early days of NCOSE/INCOSE formation, I saw a very experienced System Engineer offer a different reason for emphasis on the “systematic” issue: SE processes provide for predictable performance from Engineers who don’t really understand how their work fits into the larger effort. That works, too.[↩]
  4. The notion is easily extended to issues of regulatory authority (as opposed to mere financial authority).[↩]
  5. We sometimes used to call this “System Integration”, but the term has recently been hijacked (see the “V”), so I don’t use it in this sense anymore.[↩]