First read this. Systems Engineering in Practice

Systems Engineering is not an exact science with fixed answers, nor is it a recipe for good quality. More than anything it is a medium for communication management during large-scale development projects. Their success depends on human behaviour. Creating something as complex as the Airbus 380, a tunnel between Spain and Africa, or indeed the Titanic, requires the involvement of numerous people that are intelligent, cooperative, funny and generous, but also narrow-minded, jealous, uninterested, greedy, cynical or just stupid. Thousands may work together. Many of them will never meet. First Read This provides a set of tools for keeping track of when and where you are in complex projects. It is richly illustrated with examples of projects that were successful or failed, some of them rather miserably. The emphasis is on the aerospace industry, but many other fields are included, ranging from USB stick packaging to defence plans. Part of the book is a removable graphic overview of all the tools. First Read This is no guarantee that mistakes will no longer be made, but it will help the reader to be both creative and careful.