I would like for my blog to provide some value to young people who are considering careers in technology or careers in other disciplines that make use of technology.

Toward that end, I want to put some focus on the field of systems engineering.  We might begin with the basic question,

“What is systems engineering?”

A good starting place to learn about the field would be to visit this webpage of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE):

http://www.incose.org/practice/whatissystemseng.aspx

Then, for more detail, go to this INCOSE webpage:

http://www.incose.org/practice/fellowsconsensus.aspx

On the page above, Brian Mar offers the following as core concepts of systems engineering:

• Understand the whole problem before you try to solve it
• Translate the problem into measurable requirements
• Examine all feasible alternatives before selecting a solution
• Make sure you consider the total system life cycle. The birth to death concept extends to maintenance, replacement and decommission. If these are not considered in the other tasks, major life cycle costs can be ignored.
• Make sure to test the total system before delivering it.
• Document everything.

We’ll talk more about this soon.