Recently, I was involved in a discussion about when it is that a project transitions from systems engineering to detailed engineering. My answer was, “It depends.” One of my mentors suggested that a specific design level encompasses between three and five levels of decomposition. From experience, I tend to agree, …

As long as I’ve been an engineer, people have spoken about requirements management. I agree that requirements management is important to keep a program in compliance with stakeholder objectives. By stakeholder, I mean our own internal organization, the customer, the manufacturing team, the test team, the installation team, the lifecycle …

Recently, I’ve heard organizations take the position that systems engineering is an unnecessary expense, and that engineering efforts should push directly to mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and software engineering. This philosophy espouses that problems will be corrected during the integration and testing phases of a project or program. It says …

Have you ever been working on a project and read a requirement and thought, “Why’s that there?” or “What’s that supposed to mean?” I know I have. I’ve worked on Department of Defense and commercial programs and seen requirements that make me pause. I vividly recall working on one software …