Systems engineering failures like schedule slips, budget overruns, and other setbacks, occur often and can be costly, but the literature provides little guidance on why these failures occur or how to prevent them. In our previous work we argued that systems engineering failures are manifestations of similar underlying problems, and thus leveraged literature on the theory of accident causation, as well as the many accident investigation reports, to understand better how and why project failures occur and potential ways of preventing these failures. We developed a database of over 900 examples of failure causes and over 600 examples of remedial actions. In this paper, we detail our process for building this database into an interactive network‐based solution aid that anyone experiencing problems in their project or organization can access. The interactive solution aid provides the user with “instant expertise” in accident causation and remediation because it provides users with summaries and simplifications of the causes and remediation measures from the failures we studied.

Organizations that develop or operate complex engineering systems are plagued by systems engineering failures like schedule overruns, budget exceedances, and project cancellations. Unfortunately, there is not much actionable guidance on why these failures happen or how to prevent them. Our approach contains two novel aspects. First, we argue that system accidents and other failures in systems engineering are manifestations of similar underlying problems. Therefore, we can leverage the literature on accident causation and the many publicly available accident investigation reports to better understand how and why failures in systems engineering occur, and to identify ways of preventing them. Second, to address the lack of concrete guidance on identifying and preventing incipient failures, we provide specific examples of each type of failure cause and of the recommendations for preventing these causes. We analyzed a set of 30 accidents and 33 project failures, spanning a range of industries, and found 23 different failure causes, most of which appear in both accidents and other project failures, suggesting that accidents and project failures do happen in similar was. We also identified 16 different recommended remedial actions. We link these causes and recommendations in a cause-recommendation network, and associate over 900 specific examples of how these causes manifested in failures, and over 600 specific examples of the associated recommended remedial actions, with each cause or recommendation.

Systems engineering skills are difficult to teach in a university setting. As a result, new graduates may require significant on-the-job-training and experience before they and their employers are confident in their systems engineering skills. For example, NASA developed the Systems Engineering Leadership Development Program (SELDP) to provide "development activities, training, and education" to more quickly cultivate systems engineers. We need better ways of teaching systems engineering, so that engineers require less on-the-job training before taking on their roles at their respective engineering companies. A first step in improving systems engineering education is identifying and assessing the strengths and inadequacies in systems engineering education. Here, we propose an approach based on an analysis of the types of errors systems engineers make in practice. In our previous work, we analyzed a large set of systems engineering failures and identified "decision errors" in systems engineering-decisions made before the accident that accident investigators identified as contributing significantly to the accident. We developed eight survey questions based on failures in our dataset, including the Challenger launch decision, the Alaska Airlines flight 261 crash, and the Piper Alpha oilrig fire. We received 47 responses in the Fall 2016 semester and 101 responses in the Spring 2017 semester from undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in Purdue's Aeronautics and Astronautics department. Our initial statistical analysis indicates that there may be a correlation between a student's performance in and exposure to systems engineering-related classes and the student's performance on our survey. systems, and generally do not claim to produce systems engineers, rather, they produce graduates skilled in aspects of system development and operation.

Her research concentrates on taking a systems approach to finding the common causes of systems engineering accidents and project failures. Diane received a dual BS degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from University at Buffalo in New York.

No abstract