Whenever I visit an organization engaged in systems engineering, the #1 challenge is always the same. Large or small, seasoned or new, government or commercial, the complaint is always the shortage of good systems engineers. The common refrain is “we don’t have enough, and many of the ones we have …

Our world is standing in the midst of what amounts to its fourth industrial revolution. It is rapidly unfolding and begs for a way to manage its impact. The systems mindset holds the promise of shaping the course of the new revolution in a productive way. The first industrial revolution …

Ask any engineer what they do, and once you drill down past the knee-jerk response of “build stuff/make stuff” to the real essence of their profession, they will tell you that they “solve problems.” The very word “engineer” is rooted in the Latin words ingenare (to create, contrive, devise) and …

System of Systems (SoS) — A system of systems (SoS) brings together a set of systems for a task that none of the systems can accomplish on its own. Each constituent system keeps its own management, goals, and resources while coordinating within the SoS and adapting to meet SoS goals. …