HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Today’s systems engineering practices are influenced by the global context, their historical evolution, and the domains to which they are applied. Successful engineers have been practicing systems thinking for centuries- often by intuition, but also by heuristics as experience grew from designing and constructing buildings, aqueducts, bridges, ships, and sewers. These intuitions have often been codified into tools and practices that are application domain specific. Today systems engineering is valued more widely in businesses both large and small. Some businesses have dedicated systems engineers- but many have domain engineers who design using systems engineering practices

Today systems engineering has strengthened its theoretical foundations and broadened its best practices and standards. Engineers are increasingly using newer concepts such as model based systems engineering, digital transformation, and product line engineering and more domains are adopting systems engineering principles, practices, and insights. This is true for very large systems, systems of systems, complex socio-technical systems- and for very small systems, IoT devices, and in situ medical devices. Today’s engineers design and operate large constellations of small satellites, plan missions to Mars, develop new vaccines, and address climate change. Furthermore, the state of the art is evolving rapidly because of ongoing technical advances and the convergence of systems engineering with other disciplines.