May I tell you a story about someone I met at this year’s INCOSE conference? This is a true story. I took a few minutes away from the Vitech booth to grab some coffee. As I was trying to get the last few drops of coffee from the urn, a …

Why systems engineering? How can that help? Isn’t it enough to let the engineering disciplines do their work and then put the project together? Systems engineering takes a systems view of the design. It provides more than a simple connection of disparate parts. Systems engineering looks at three systems – …

In his work, On Rhetoric, Aristotle offers instruction on the art of persuasion. He identifies three modes or “offices” of persuasion. In Greek they are ethos, logos, and pathos. In order to cast a persuasive argument, Aristotle posits that we must construct from all three elements. In order to be …

In any system design, redesign or improvement effort there are always three systems to consider. The first one is obvious- it is the one being designed or modified. The second is less obvious and is often given cursory treatment. That is the system in which the subject of the design/redesign …