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SE Management is Not SE Core Competency: Time to Shift this Outdated, 60‐Year‐Old Paradigm
Author(s) -
Wasson Charles
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
incose international symposium
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-5837
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2018.00528.x
Subject(s) - schedule , staffing , process (computing) , applied engineering , work (physics) , engineering management , government (linguistics) , paradigm shift , control (management) , action (physics) , computer science , project management , engineering ethics , program management , engineering , systems engineering , management , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , physics , epistemology , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , economics , operating system
In the early 1950's the development of large, complex systems encountered two major challenges: (1) traditional Engineering methods were inadequate for coordinating and communicating designs and changes across multiple disciplines; and (2) projects were incurring unmanageable technical failures, cost overruns, and schedule slips. Exacerbating these challenges were growing conflicts between management and the engineers and scientists performing the engineering. These two challenges manifested themselves in the form of a “management gap,” which emerged due to management frustrations with engineers and scientists’ inability to articulate how the engineering process was performed, and (2) a “technology gap,” which emerged due to engineers and scientists’ frustrations with management's inability to understand how engineering was performed and the new technologies being implemented. Central to these issues was the threat to the prevalent 1950's management paradigm of exercising authoritative control over subordinates by planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling the tasks engineers and scientists performed. Corrective action solutions were urgently needed. Rather than solving the challenges, government as the acquirer of large, complex systems, decided to regain authoritative control over its contractors. As a result, the concept of Systems Management was introduced and mandated via a series of Systems, SE, and Engineering Management process standards. Over the past 60+ years, the emerging field of Systems Engineering (SE), which originally focused on answering a key engineering question “Will the system work – i.e., ‘be fit for purpose’ when realized ? (Ring, 2017) shifted to “did we follow our processes?” Projects corrected a “management” problem while neglecting the “engineering” question. As a result, projects continue to exhibit systemic performance issues. It is time to shift this outdated Systems Management paradigm and reestablish SE core competency as the “engine” for correcting SE contributions to project performance issues that seem so intractable.