Stories about attitudes

Individual attitudes toward Systems Engineering can influence the success of projects and as a consequence the quality objectives, cost and time.

Here are 4 types of attitudes that I meet in the companies today:

1. There are those who believe that Systems Engineering is only about managing needs and requirements, thus they are looking for a requirements management tool ; it is very well, they search to understand what the customer needs !
2. There are those who believe that Systems Engineering is only about architecting and designing solutions, thus they are looking for architecture and design tools; it is very well, they want to make a product !
3. There are those who believe that Systems Engineering is only about “developing” a product by making tests and correcting the errors until “it works”; they are looking for testing tools; it is very well, they want to make products that work !
4. There are those who believe that Systems Engineering consists of linking the requirements, architecture, design and verifications; they know that solutions must answer needs; tests must verify that solutions satisfy requirements. They are looking for technical management support of the whole process. It is very well, but these people do not imagine that methods and tools exist that are able to support all the aspects in an integrated approach.

Considering the first 3 “beliefs”, in a caricatured way, one approach is to juxtapose 3 sub-projects which have very few links between them: a sub-project “Requirements”, a sub-project “Architecture – Design” and a sub-project “Integration – Verification”.

Concerning the last “belief”, it should be known that its implementation is completely possible; insofar a process of engineering is defined and supported by integrated data bases. These data bases must be perennial for several decades and be able to exchange data with various tools. Everything exist from beginning of years 2000 !