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One very popular book in the MyPath Referenceware collection is Competitive Engineering: A Handbook for Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Software Engineering Using Planguage.

Written for anyone involved in management and risk control, this unique book provides a practical set of tools and techniques that enable readers to effectively design, manage and deliver results in any complex organization.
Competitive Engineering copes explicitly with the rapidly changing environment that is a reality for most of us today.
Elegant, comprehensive and accessible, the Competitive Engineering methodology provides a practical set of tools and techniques that enable readers to effectively design, manage and deliver results in any complex organization - in engineering, industry, systems engineering, software, IT, the service sector and beyond.
Here is a sneak peek excerpt from Competitive Engineering: A Handbook for Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Software Engineering Using Planguage
What is in Competitive Engineering?
CE is taught using ‘Planguage.’[1] Planguage consists of a new industrial systems engineering language for communicating systems engineering and management specifications, and a set of methods providing advice on best practices. ‘Planguage’ is central to CE and permeates all themes of this book.
The Planguage Specification Language is used to describe all the requirements, designs and plans for a system.
The main Planguage Methods are as follows:
Requirement Specification: used to capture all the different requirement types. Emphasis is placed on specifying competitive performance and resource attributes quantitatively.
Impact Estimation: used to evaluate designs against the requirements. It is also used during project implementation to track progress towards meeting the requirements.
Specification Quality Control: used at any stage of a project to check the adherence of any plan, contract, bid or technical specification to best practice specification standards.
Evolutionary Project Management: used to plan and monitor implementation of the selected designs.
The reader will, hopefully, find that these are all very practical and innovative methods, compared with current practice and literature.
[1]The word ‘Planguage’ is derived from a combination of ‘plan’ and ‘language.’ It is pronounced like ‘language’ with the initial ‘p’ pronounced as in ‘plan.’
Chapter 1: Planguage Basics and Process Control—The Purpose of Planguage
1.1 Introduction: Why We Need a Different ‘Systems Engineering’ Approach
As the rate of technological change has ‘heated up,’ I am sure we have all seen that, increasingly, nobody ‘knows all the answers.’ Previously we could rely on comparatively stable environments (technology, workforce, experienced people, politics and economics). People knew how to solve problems because they had solved similar ones before. In addition, the concept of learning by apprenticeship was valid; ‘masters’ could pass on their wisdom over a time span of years.
Things are currently moving so fast that it is dangerous to assume there is any first-hand knowledge of the technology we are going to use, or of the markets we are going to sell to. Even the organizational and social structures that we are targeting are constantly changing. Authors such as Tom Peters have long since clearly documented these trends and threats (Peters 1992).
So we have to find out ‘what works now’ by means of practice, not theory. We need to develop things in a different way. We have to learn and to change, faster than the competition.
The fundamental concepts needed now in systems engineering include:
Learning through Rapid Feedback
Feedback is the single most powerful concept for successful projects. Methods that use feedback are successful. Those that do not, seem to fail. Feedback helps you get better control of your project, by providing facts about how things are working in practice. Of course, the presumption is that the feedback is early enough to do some good. This is the main need: rapid feedback.
Dynamic Adaptability
Projects have to be able to respond to feedback and also to be able to keep pace weekly or monthly with changing business or organizational requirements. Projects must continuously monitor the relevance of their current work. Then they must modify their requirements and strategies accordingly. Any product or organizational system should be continuously evolving or it dies. Coping with external change during projects and adapting to it during projects is now the norm, not the exception. Stability would be nice, but we can't have it!

Figure 1.1: Our requirements are changing faster due to external changes.
Capturing the Requirements
It is true of any system that there are several Critical Success Factors. They include both performance requirements (such as serviceability, reliability, portability and usability) and limited resource requirements (such as people, time and money). Projects often fail to specify these critical requirements adequately:
not all the critical success factors are identified
no target numeric values for survival and success are stated
variations in targeted requirements for differing times and differing places, are not addressed:
the effect of peak loads, or system growth, on the required levels, is not taken into account
the concept of very different attribute levels, being required by different parts of the system, or by different stakeholders, is not considered
no practical ways to measure the results delivered to stakeholders are specified alongside the requirement specification.
The result is that our ability to manage successful value delivery is destroyed from the outset. It is impossible to engineer designs to meet non-specified or ambiguous requirements. It also is impossible to track changes for such ill-specified requirements.
Focus on Results
The primary systems engineering task is to design and deliver the best technical and organizational solutions, in order to satisfy the stakeholders' requirements, at a competitive cost. Projects must ensure that their focus is on delivering critical and profitable results. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying: "Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age."[1] Unfortunately, this still appears true today. It is the delivery of the required results from a system that counts. The process used and the technology selected are mere tools in the service of the results.
Interdisciplinary Communication
Clear communication amongst the different stakeholder groups is essential. Common problems include:
ambiguity, due to specification that lacks precise detail
critical specifications being ‘lost’ in overwhelming detail
technical specification being unintelligible to the management, who reviews it
inadequate tracking of specification credibility: its source, status and authorization level.
Leadership and Motivation
Clear vision makes a huge difference. Clear vision gives a common focus for logical decision-making. When people understand the overall direction, they tend to make good local decisions. Only the critical few decisions need to be made at the top. It is important for all team members to be able immediately to channel their energies in a true common team direction.
Receptiveness to Organizational Change
It is also important for system engineers to know that their organizational culture really supports improvement in systems engineering methods. In other words, that people are actively encouraged to look for improvements and to try out new solutions. Positive motivation can be everything! It is not a case of demanding improvement, more a case of supporting and rewarding people who seek it.
Continuous Process Improvement
The quality guru, W. Edwards Deming considered that: "Eternal process improvement, the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, is necessary as long as you are in competition." Having best-practice systems engineering standards in place, measuring conformance to them and continually trying to improve them is necessary if you are to compete well.
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The only thing that should not change is a great change process.
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