Systems engineering and technical leadership

Why Do We Care About Systems Engineering and Technical Leadership ... 

We should care about systems engineering and technical leadership because together they can transform the economics of entire industries, or the effectiveness of government missions such as national defense. These transformations arise when engineered systems are integrated into increasingly more capable systems-of-systems, or into improved system architeetures. 

We can make several observations concerning systems engineering and technical leadership from this example, as discussed below. 

The scope and meaning of the concept of technical leadership can be outlined by drawing an analogy to business theory and leadership. The analogy is not meant to imply that systems engineering is not engineering, but instead that technical leadership is founded upon systems engineering and transcends it. 

The analogy offered here illustrates that systems engineering can be described in terms that emphasize its value rather than its techniques or steps, and that technical leadership is required to leverage the most important facets of systems engineering so as to produce economic or social benefits. 

The discussion above has illustrated technical leadership as it pertains to customers and beneficiaries of the system. We now turn our attention to technical leadership as it pertains to internal project execution - that is, producing the expected engineering results. Systems engineers are often the bridge between these two very dynamic areas. 

Systems Engineering is a transformative discipline that brings technical leadership and emergent value to the creation of complex systems for the benefit of society s current and future challenges. 

Our Leadership and Management Competency Model, derived from our successful leadership experiences, highlights additional non-technical competencies, including team-oriented skills. These skills, and those of the Systems Engineering Competency Model, must be applied in the appropriate mix for a given context and set of circumstances. 

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