Systems Engineering

Developing a new system starts with a desire or need which cannot be satisfied by existing systems. The needs and desires are expressed by a Customer, For systems engineering purposes, the direct customer is the person or entity who is paying for a project or can direct the engineering staff. For example, in the Boeing Company, that is the engineering managers and general managers of the company. The ultimate customers, which are airline passengers, cannot express their desires directly. So the company management serves as a proxy to express their desires as an input to the engineering process. Other methods, such as surveys, can be used to determine the desires of the ultimate customers.

The initial expression may be in the form of general verbal goals, system properties, levels of technical performance, and similar statements. The customer also will have some value preferences which describe what a better design is from their point of view. These can be things like "minimum cost", "minimum waste output", and "maximum efficiency".

The first major systems engineering step, Requirements Analysis, is the process of converting these general customer desires and preferences to specific measurable features which can be used for design and evaluation. Two main parts of this process are Requirements Definition and Measures of Effectiveness.