Systems Engineering - A Definition

As I continue my way through the Systems Engineering masters program, I’m finding myself longing for the most basic and rudimentary definition for what Systems Engineering is. I know what a system is, and I know what an engineer is, but what exactly is System Engineering? There are certainly more than enough definitions out there, but finding the right definition for myself is crucial if I indeed plan to have a successful career in the topic. Applying the ‘law of parsimony’, or Occam’s Razor, I believe that System Engineering consists of 2 basic elements.

The first element is organization – to get what is in peoples heads onto paper. This would seem fairly trivial, but as systems grow larger and more complex, you soon see that there is an efficient and systematic way to organizing information for many people to collaborate on. It is fairly easy with a bright mind and some form of education on a particular subject to conceive a collection of ideas that fashion a solution for a particular problem. It is another thing to take an idea and successfully implement a complex system of interconnected pieces and parts that work together seamlessly. As system become progressively more complex containing a nearly un-fathomable number of components, it is critical that there exist a system of documenting the thoughts that brought about a solution and it’s instructions. With this organization is built the foundation for collaboration to begin. Even God Himself said that “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” – Genesis 11. Organization within Systems Engineering allows all involved to ‘speak the same language’. Lest just pray that we build systems that do not glorify ourselves… we’ve seen how that ends up.

The second element is decision making - the process for obtaining the best result stemming from the necessity to choose between two or more alternatives. This as well seems trivial, but again, due to the immense amount of complexity systems are beginning to represent, deciding to choose one alternative over another could have a ripple effect that runs throughout the entire system. The ability to logically and analytically attain data representing why one approach is a more advantageous alternative than another is critical. Essentially, the entire architecture of a solution is a collection of decisions. An entire field has been dedicated to the art of decision-making called Decision Analysis, and has become pivotal to the process of system architecture.

Short and simple, the combination of these two elements facilitates the process of reducing risk within a system. That is why Systems Engineering exists.

I look forward to the next year of grad school and see how my views on Systems Engineering change. I hope what I have written above is dead on, but if there’s anything that I have learned, it’s that I’m rarely ‘dead on’.