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Systems engineering is like Esperanto; it would be very useful if more than a few people would "speak" it. It already starts with the fact that the term "system
by Rochus 3y ago
Systems engineering is like Esperanto; it would be very useful if more than a few people would "speak" it. It already starts with the fact that the term "systems engineering", which has been clearly defined in various standards since the sixties (MIL-STD 499, IEEE 1220, ISO 26702, ISO 24748-4, etc.) and backed by a comprehensive body of knowledge, is now used almost arbitrarily by anyone. Also in the article, the term is used with a different meaning than the original one.
Of course it can be argued that language evolves like people, but after all, also in physics or mathematics we don't just replace or redefine terms ad libitum (you won't pass exams if you use your own terminology), and on systems engineering there are university courses and a well established scholarship (at least there were when I was a student many years ago).
- strobe999 3y agoHuh, in all these years I never suspected to find resources about SE in standards bodies. Would be nice to have more formal training about SE specific procedures instead of products and general project management. I found the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook which seems to be a prolific publication, is it worth studying as an IT SE? Any other recommendations?
- Rochus 3y agoI wrote a couple of articles about the topic on Quora some years ago, see e.g. https://www.quora.com/Which-one-is-a-good-book-to-learn-Systems-Engineering/answer/Rochus-Keller https://www.quora.com/Which-one-is-a-good-book-to-learn-Syst...
- bionsystem 3y agoI remember introducing myself as such to a meeting and some manager didn't understand why I was there. Turns out he came from a previous experience where "systems engineer" was about designing nuclear combustion engines, which is quite a bit different than writing shell scripts ! Now I prefer SRE or simply sysadmin.