Is Your Systems Engineering Knowledge and Practice Ready for the New Types of Systems Emerging Today?

There are three aspects of modern and future systems that are dramatically shifting traditional systems engineering practice. For convenience, we categorize these as highly interconnected cyber-physical systems, learning-based systems and human-machine teaming, and highly adaptable systems. As an established systems engineer or one just learning the practice, we ask the question “Are you prepared for these types of systems?” Each of these categories creates specific challenges to traditional systems engineering practice. Together they are driving a set of trends in the systems engineering domain, centered on digital transformation. How many of these challenges are you seeing, and how many of these trends are you currently experiencing? Read this paper and reflect on where you need to be headed in your career as a systems engineer.