Complexity is nothing new to systems engineers and managers. The discipline of systems engineering evolved to improve our ability to deal with scale, interdependency, and complexity in systems development. Few systems engineers would doubt that complexity is increasing every year. The rate of change, the increasing interdependence and adaptability of …

In late October, I attended the National Defense Industry Association Systems Engineering Conference, held in Springfield, Virginia. The conference covers a wide spectrum of system engineering topics, primarily supporting the Department of Defense, but also in support of other federal agencies. There were many interesting topics and discussions over the …