(Compiled by Jorg Largent)

Systems engineering is not a separate department. Systems engineering is a way of doing business.

The question is not if we should let procedure stand in the way of customer satisfaction. The question is if the procedures we have established to ensure customer satisfaction are less important that the panic of the moment. In making this decision one must remember if the procedures in question were established in response to customer dissatisfaction in the past.

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
-Lord Kelvin

One value of the disciplined systems engineering process as opposed to “native” or “intuitive” systems engineering is minimizing the sins of omission, a.k.a. the too-late utterance: “Oh No!” Requirements are independent of:

• Difficulty
• Schedule
• Parts availability
• The way it was built
• What they did (or didn’t do) in the lab A lesson learned is not a lesson learned until it is a lesson and until it is learned.