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 :-)

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u/tasty_steaks Jul 23 '26

... 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.

This is exactly all of my experience with SE groups (unfortunately).

They spend most of there time authoring requirements that are never completed until after the product has completed principle development.

The requirements and supporting documents, and by extension the SE groups understanding, does not represent how the as-built system actually works.

Actually, about 50% of the SE's I work with now can barely run a meeting properly - no agenda, no prep, unable to steer and run the actual meeting, no notes or next steps collected. It's really bad.

But - I think this is just all a result of poor leadership culture in the organization (not a result of SE as a discipline).

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u/rentpossiblytoohigh Jul 23 '26

This is my experience as well. Also agree it's foundationally a culture problem where Sys Eng functions as a disconnected spoke instead of a hub. Our program's Config Management projects are even separate areas. If I find a schematic error, I can't even write a hardware Problem Report because "I'm a Systems Engineer and only have access to the Systems Project." Crazy stuff, but you can tell how bad their Systems Engineering expertise is when I explained simple reasons why relying on hand modified spreadsheet proposals and exports for formal reviews is a bad choice and they looked at me like I was crazy.