30 Apr Systems Engineering, Simplified: Key Tech’s Guiding Principles

Systems Engineering is a dense and challenging field. From the unparalleled NASA Systems Engineering Handbook to INCOSE’S thorough and accessible Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge to the IEC 15288 standard for system life cycle processes, the resources are abundant but overwhelming.

As a practical complement to these resources, Key Tech trains our system engineers based on a set of guiding principles to serve as anchors for this incredible depth of knowledge. These principles provide a concise, memorable set of guideposts for navigating tough programs from concept to manufacturing.

1. Be tenacious. Learn as much as you can. No process or checklist can ever tell you everything you need to know about a system. Engage with your curiosity and start learning!
2. Assume everyone is confused and has no memory (including you). While we’re not all that confused and amnesic, developing documentation as if we are will un-burden your brain, both now and in the future, so you can focus less on remembering and explaining things to newcomers, and more on further building the system.
3. Give yourself options, then be ready to justify your decisions. Don’t settle for an architecture or design just because it’s the first one you came up with. Give yourself an abundance of options so that you can be selective about the solution. Just make sure you can defend that selection once you’ve made it.
4. Amplify your team. A system engineer relies on large teams of people that want to do great work. Focus your efforts on enabling them to do so.
5. Focus on the need. (Requirements are just book-keeping.) If you’re ever unsure how to meet a requirement (or what the requirement even means), go back to the need. What need are our stakeholders expressing by asking for this particular thing? Why does the system need that feature?
6. Eat the frog. Mark Twain was once misquoted as saying, “If you have to eat a frog every day, do it in the morning.” Putting off the work of reading technical standards, contacting test labs, and talking to regulatory experts is just like not eating the frog—it’s going to hang over your head all day. So you might as well do it now.
7. Testing is design. As a company, we have excellent instincts for design. We seek out needs and requirements, draft architectures, create rapid prototypes, evaluate and iterate those prototypes into alpha and beta versions, all while capturing our design rationale into coherent documentation. Good test management simply requires treating your testing like a design: Understand the requirements of the test, prototype the test method early, iterate on the procedure often, and document the test procedure and results thoroughly.
8. It doesn’t work until you prove it. Use testing as a way to prove that your instrument or circuit board or mechanism—or, ultimately, your system—actually does what you say it should.

These principles are unique to Key Tech’s culture and our values of ownership, support, exceptional work, and fun. We have developed them over decades of experience designing and building ever more sophisticated systems.

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Jeff Gunnarsson

Jeff joined Key Tech in 2011 and since then has led the design of several embedded electronics systems for medical and industrial devices, including an ultrasonic diagnostic instrument, a pharmaceutical compounder, and a water quality testing system. He is skilled in analog and mixed signal electronic design as well as digital logic design in VHDL, and has even been known to use some heavy-duty math and science when backed into a corner.

Jeff graduated from the University of Maryland with a BS in Electrical Engineering. In his spare time, he plays bass guitar in a cover band and tries to get his co-workers to come to his shows.

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