
Mitre Systems Engineering Guide (2014) [pdf] - mindcrime
http://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/se-guide-book-interactive.pdf
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roland35
Another great resource for Systems Engineering is the NASA Systems Engineering
Handbook: [https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/nasa-systems-
engineering...](https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/nasa-systems-engineering-
handbook)

NASA's guide is a more general engineering approach, since their projects are
aerospace instead of IT. Chapter 4 has a great overview of requirements and
traceability.

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genericresponse
This material is concerning to me on a base level.

To me, it doesn't reflect positively on the cost and complexity to implement a
large scale system. It presents much of the material without a simple guide to
what should be optional, when, and where.

You almost need a huge number of people to even digest the material and then
make decisions about it. It feels like a massive reflection of the government
contracting industry. I see it illustrating the value of editorial or
architectural control and a willingness to take risks by saying "no".

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whalesalad
Systems engineering in its very nature is a huge task. You’re trying to
balance the various tug of war battles between everything. Cost, performance,
reliability, weight, etc... How light is this material vs how strong is it?
What kind of tooling do we already have that can we use vs do we need to
invent new tooling? Inventing new tooling is expensive. Inventing new tooling
requires training on new tools. Training is expensive. The list goes on and
on. Systems engineering is preventing deadlock.

I’m speaking in the physical world (aircraft) but the same concepts apply to
software. If your system is small, sure you can do it all in your head. But if
it’s large, you need to put a cohesive plan together that accounts for
_everyones_ issues, even if they aren’t going to get solved right away.

So yeah, you do need a whole team to do this kind of thing.

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donquichotte
Can anyone shed light on what MITRE Corporation is and what kind of systems
they build?

I could not find that information from Wikipedia or the official web page.

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randcraw
I worked at Mitre for 5 years in the 1990s in their DC area campus. Some of
their core business has changed since then, but not what makes them special.

Mitre serves two primary roles. First, they're a technical advocate for
various US military and intelligence agencies, representing their interests at
conferences and in committees and helping them shape policy and practices in
that advisory role. As such, Mitre is granted levels of trust and access to
agency materiel that no contractor has. As such, Mitre is not supposed to take
work that might compete directly with the financial interests of contractors
and thus must engage only in activities that are non-competitive: advising or
coordinating, rather than building systems.

The second role Mitre plays is as a FFRDC (Federally Funded R&D Center), a
long term R&D facility dedicated to one government agency, directly serving
their interests (as Jet Propulsion Labs serves NASA). In Mitre's case, the
clients are the FAA, Homeland Security and cybersecurity, or the US military's
(C3I) Command Control Communications and Intelligence interests (mostly run by
the army).

An FFRDC maintains staff with various specialized technical subject matter
skills that serve the needs and plans of the agency, who often act on behalf
of the agency with the internal access and authority equal to that of a
government employee. But this close relationship with the government often
extends to the non-FFRDC parts of Mitre too.

[https://www.mitre.org/centers/we-operate-
ffrdcs](https://www.mitre.org/centers/we-operate-ffrdcs)

Advancement at Mitre is unlike the typical contractor, where you manage
increasingly large parts of contracts. Mitre benefits most when you establish
an ever closer relationship with the government agency and people therein. The
higher the governmant authority you report to, the more valuable you become
within Mitre.

Publishing papers and reports to and on behalf of your agency makes you (and
your team) more visible and useful to that customer, increasing the agency's
desire to engage more Mitre services and rely on them for more uses. Mitre
tech staff (usu software developers) often build and show lots of demos before
agency managers (and generals) that prototype capabilities they want to
explore and advance.

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pp19dd
For any interested gubmit workers, a lot of red tape has been cut here. You
deal with the IRS' contracting officer directly to start, since they already
went through the competitive bid process.

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vegetablepotpie
Compared to the INCOSE SE handbook, this guide has much simpler, direct,
easier to understand language that feels more natural.

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Craighead
Is this the same Mitre from The Cuckoo's Egg?

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tyingq
Appears so. From Wikipedia's page about _Cuckoo 's Egg_: _" eventually tracked
the intrusion to a call center at MITRE, a defense contractor in McLean,
Virginia"_

Page 4 of this PDF shows McLean, Virginia as the HDQ.

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omegabravo
Is anyone aware of a good lecture series on Youtube or equivalent about
Systems Engineering. I covered it in Uni, but it would be nice to go through a
refresher.

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r4um
You can try the MIT one
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP60jIMmB53zl...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP60jIMmB53zl6awCKMnABhYx)

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peterwwillis
This is both high-level and low-level at the same time; I'm not sure juniors
would grok it all, so perhaps this is more of a reference for SEs?

~~~
jcurbo
Yes, this is intended as a reference/best practices document for systems
engineers.

