Relationships between Systems Engineering and Project Management

The methods, tools, and techniques of project management can be recursively applied to managing the technical aspects of a project. Technical work activities must be planned, organized, staffed, controlled, and directed; the what, who, when, where, how, and why questions must be answered; work activities must be planned and estimated, measured and controlled, led and directed, and risk must be managed.

The Systems Engineering Management Plan (SEMP)

The systems engineering management plan (SEMP) is an important element of systems engineering. According to (NASA 2007):

The SEMP is the rule book that describes to all participants how the project will be technically managed.

Appendix J of the NASA Systems Engineering Handbook (NASA 2007) provides a checklist of items that should be included in an SEMP, as needed [[1]]:

Purpose and Scope of the SEMP
Applicable Documents
Technical Summary
System Description
System Structure
Product Integration
Boundary of Technical Effort
Cross References
Technical Effort Integration, including
- Concurrent engineering,
- The activity phasing of specialty engineering,
- The participation of specialty disciplines,
- The involvement of specialty disciplines,
- The role and responsibility of specialty disciplines,
- The participation of specialty disciplines in system decomposition and definition,
- The role of specialty disciplines in verification and validation,
- Reliability,
- Maintainability,
- Quality assurance,
- Integrated logistics,
- Human engineering,
- Safety,
- Producibility, and
- Survivability/vulnerability.
Responsibility and Authority
Contractor Integration
Support Integration
Technical Process Integration
Technology Insertion
Engineering Methods and Tools
Specialty Engineering
Integration with the Project Plan and Technical Resource Allocation
Waivers
Appendices
- including plan templates
References

Some systems engineers become specialists in systems engineering project management.

References

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