By Paul Cudney and John Silvas 

John Thomas, Sr. Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton and candidate for President of INCOSE, shared his views on the value systems engineers (SE) add to large programs. Successful programs excel in three team roles: management, build component, and definition and integration. Leadership exercised by the systems engineer, based on compelling technical mastery, is the key to successful execution of each team. However, technical prowess does not ensure success. The systems engineer has a key responsibility to lead decision makers to successful decisions bounded by schedule and budget. Mr. Thomas offered several vivid examples during his presentation.

In each case, communication skills appropriate to each team’s role were critical to resolving technical issues – the SE presented decision options and risks in terms relevant to the scope and responsibilities of the team. Wrong team decisions will eventually limit the effectiveness of the systems engineer. Mr. Thomas’ leadership perspective from the top generated challenging questions and cogent observations from the audience at Aerospace and three remote sites: Boeing Huntington Beach, JPL, and Palmdale. If you missed this meeting, you may have missed the leadership insight needed for your next team challenge. One set of key take-aways was:

1. SE with strong leadership and communication skills with an ability to traverse different viewpoints, perceptions, and expectations of the different program players (management, builders, and SE&I). He provided specific guiding tenets for interaction with each of these teams as an effective technical leader and SE.
2. He provided a technical leadership example that illustrated the challenge for the SE given different perspectives on the desired product or outcome as you go through the lifecycle.
3. Overarching responsibility for SE is to ensure management team understands technical implications of capability, cost, and schedule constraints.
4. The audience resonated with this perspective of the SE role and stated that there is an inadequate amount of training on this topic in current college curriculums and available training classes today.
5. The audience added that more cost, performance, schedule, and risk trade study insight, methods, and best practices were required in the next generation of INCOSE SE handbook.