Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Systems engineering consumes resources. It isn’t “real engineering.” It, however, is usually necessary.

Systems engineering—one part of it—enables us to record what everything is and what everything does. But we already know that, duh! Or do we?

Consider an organization with three or 33 software systems.

• What does #1 do? #2?…#33?
• How does #13 differ from #23? from #33?
• Are there common parts? Unique parts? What are they?

Can we answer any of these questions with CERTAINTY? And CERTAINTY means if you answer one question wrong you don’t get paid this week. Well? Certain?

This is one result of not performing systems engineering. A group of persons starts with a basic problem and a basic system. We understand it. We hold it all in our heads. One day we awaken to a large group of persons (What is that new guy’s name? What does he do?) and a large number of large systems (What is the purpose of the TPS report?). The only persons who know what they are doing work in the Redundant Department of Redundancy.

Life at work isn’t funny or fun anymore. The resources consumed keeping track of everything and tracing everything to something worthwhile are worthwhile.