Systems Engineering Heuristics
Heuristics provide a way for an established profession to pass on its accumulated wisdom. This allows practitioners and others interested in how things are done to gain insights from what has been found to work well in the past and to apply the lessons learned. Heuristics will usually take the form of short expressions in natural language. These can be memorable phrases encapsulating rules of thumb, shortcuts or "words to the wise", giving general guidelines on professional conduct or rules, advice, or guidelines on how to act under specific circumstances. Common heuristics do not summarize all there is to know, yet they can act as useful entry points for learning more. This article overview heuristics in general as well as those supporting systems engineering practice.
Overview
Heuristics have always played an important part in the history of engineering and shaped its progress, especially before science developed to the point when it could also assist engineers. Systems Engineering is still at a stage at which there is no sufficiently reliable scientific basis for many of the systems being built, which has triggered a renewed interest in heuristics to fill the gap. This is especially true as we extend the practice of Systems Engineering to providing solutions to inherently complex, unbounded, ill-structured, or ‘wicked’ problems.
Using heuristics does not guarantee success under all circumstances, but usefulness of a heuristic can be maximized if the known extent of its applicability is made clear. At their best, heuristics can act as aids to decision making, value judgements, and assessments.
Heuristics have the potential to be useful in a number of ways:
· reduce the amount of thinking (or computation) needed to make a good decision or a choice,
· help in finding an acceptable solution to a problem,
· identify the most important factors to focus on while addressing a complex problem,
· improve the quality of decisions by drawing on best practices,
· avoid repeating avoidable mistakes, and
· act as an entry point to wider knowledge of what has been found to work.
References
Works Cited
None.
Primary References
None.
Additional References
None.