Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2021
Systems thinking is vital for engineering of nowadays systems characterized by system spanning interactions and an incresing amount of functions. Systems Engineering (SE) represents an interdisciplinary approach, gaining extensive attention to cope with increasing system complexity. Implementation of SE in existing organizations and processes, however, is facing challenges. As a matter of course there is not out of the box concept to be used, in fact definitions and understandings seem to be based on the background and experience of the individual or organization und differ widely. Thus, motivations and expectations of practitioner are manifold and support to adapte and implement SE-methodolgies is needed. Research presented in this contribution picks up the need to provide orientation for individuals, engineering teams and project managers when implementing SE and to address the specific context in that engineering is carried out. Objective is to describe the core idea of SE by a consistent set of principles. This set is used to build up a context specific understanding of SE as a foundation to introduce new methods and procedures in existing method ecosystems.