Tag: Russell Ackoff

COVID 19 Anxiety and the Systems Engineer

Here is a 4 minute video that conveys the main points of this blog post. As the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) looms large on the public radar screen, it consumes a greater and greater share of our attention. We tend to get swept up in the drama and emotion unfolding like …

Using MBSE for the Operational Analysis of Systems

Last year, I wrote that one of the most important characteristics of a strong systems engineering organization is knowing the operational setting in which the system-under-development will be placed. (See: 9 Characteristics of Good Systems Engineering.) Whether you are an organization contemplating a new system initiative or product development, or …

Who Needs a Metamodel?

What is a metamodel? The English prefix “meta” comes directly from the Greek meaning “beyond” or “after.” That has been extended in English usage to mean “about,” connoting a higher level of abstraction. Thus, “meta-cognition” is “thinking about thinking” and a metamodel is a model of a model. Why have …