Just as medieval knights had need of the right tool at the right time—a longsword? a lance? a dagger?—we systems engineers have a similar challenge. But the unsavory foe that we do battle with is not another knight carrying a mace or throwing flames, but the scourge of disorder, lack …

I speak with people in the systems engineering community all the time. When I hear systems engineers say, “Yeah, I’m doin’ SysML,” it makes me cringe. I’m not bashing SysML views in any way, shape, or form. I think SysML 1.5 diagrams are a great communications tool. But they don’t …

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 …