Undergraduate Basics for Systems Engineering, Part 1: Principles

by Tom Gilb

There are some very basic things that systems engineers should be taught. These things are both fundamental and classic. They are fundamental because we can reuse them in a very wide variety of software engineering (SE) situations. They are classic in the sense that they have a very long usefulness half-life. They are probably useful for at least a career lifetime. When I was in my 20s, I decided to collect, to learn, and to develop these SE basics. Now, in my 60s, I am more than ever convinced that these fundamentals should be shared with students. The fundamentals, which I will discuss in this series of Advisors are: principles (heuristics, laws), measures (ways to quantify critical factors), concepts (really useful definitions of fundamental SE ideas), and processes (really useful SE processes).

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Undergraduate Basics for Systems Engineering, Part 1: Principles3 October 2007