“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.”  Stephen Covey The move …

One of the most important—and often overlooked—aspects of good systems engineering is first principles thinking. In an excellent article on first principles thinking in his Farnam Street blog, Shane Parrish discusses first principles thinking in the context of Julia Child’s French cooking. Arguing that what made her extraordinary television show …

The main purpose of a systems engineering tool is to augment the work of the systems engineer by providing a framework in which to construct a model of the system. This helps in two major ways. It allows the tool to do the record keeping, assuring the consistency and completeness …

In the world of model-based systems engineering (MBSE), there is still a fair amount of confusion around what makes a good—or even acceptable—MBSE model. George E. P. Box, the English statistician, famously observed, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” He further clarified that idea with this expansion, “Remember …