Engineering of complex systems: Understanding the art side

✍ Scribed by David Newbern; Jerry Nolte

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 146 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1098-1241
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6858(1999)2:3<181::aid-sys6>3.0.co;2-k

✦ Synopsis

The engineering of complex systems is both science and art. Although the cause of many difficulties in development of complex systems is the art side, this side is frequently ignored since it cannot be conveniently described and quantified. We recommend a conscious recognition of the appropriate role of the art, or judgment side of systems engineering, especially in the key activities of assumption and decomposition. Assumptions are the critical ingredients in both of the key processes of abstraction (representing only the most essential information) and of decomposition (dividing the problem into cleanly partitioned subsets). These two methods (abstraction and decomposition) form the core of any effective approach to engineering complex systems.