The Evolution of Systems Engineering

The 21st century is an exciting time for the field of systems engineering. Advances in our understanding of the traditional discipline are being made. At the same time new modes of systems engineering are emerging to address the engineering challenges of systems-of-systems (SoS) and enterprise systems. Even at this early point in their evolution, these new modes are evincing their own principles, processes and practices. Some are different in degree than engineering at the system level while others are different in kind. While it is impossible to predict how the traditional and new forms of systems engineering will evolve, it is clear even now that there is a long and robust future for all three. Increases in technology complexity have led to new challenges in architecture, networks, hardware and software engineering, and human systems integration. At the same time, the scale at which systems are engineered is exceeding levels that could have been imagined only a short time ago. As a consequence, all three forms of systems engineering will be needed to solve the engineering problems of the future, sometimes separately but increasingly in combination. This paper defines three modes of systems engineering, discusses the challenge space each addresses, describes how they differ from and complement each other. It asks and starts to answer the question of how to enable the development of enterprise systems engineering in a defense department.