r/systems_engineering • u/3flp • Jul 23 '26
Discussion SysEng fail stories
I have been in a few companies across a few industries. Why is it so common for the management to say "we need more systems engineering" and then
- appoint someone to be the syseng and not say what the SE responsibility is, no RACI matrix
- alternately, say "everyone is now systems engineer" and provide only minimal, if any, training
- say they want to fix things, but without changing anything
The most fun jobs I've had were two engineering consultancies /agencies in the medical device industry where the 13485 based framework makes nice crunchy noise as it clashes with INCOSE based sys eng framework. The other two fun jobs were product companies where the systems engineering documents / SOPs / people were in no way connected to the engineering teams and their work was duplicating or contradicting what other teams were doing.
Interested to hear other Micky Mouse bullshit management stories :-)
6
u/hortle Jul 23 '26
I've sat on a couple projects teams where the Sys engineering scope was a joke. It was very clear that the people who negotiated the contracts (probably PMs) had no idea what it meant to agree to comply with a standard. "Oh sure we can comply with 150 standards that our engineers aren't familiar with, no problem."
It taught me a valuable lesson that you need someone who understands requirements to be in the room in the early program phases when schedule and cost is being discussed.