Welcome to Coherent Decision Solutions

My introduction to structured decision management was in an engineering context. Engineering is about making good decisions based on the requirements of the problem and the constraints of the environment. There are lots of ‘hard parts’ to doing engineering successfully, but in essence, it is about having good data (including needs/requirements), understanding constraints and applying them to problem solving. I have found that this is also true for life in general.

The framework for structured decision management is not complex and can be applied consistently across a number of domains. While not complex itself, challenging goals can be addressed with an effort commensurate with the complexity of the goal and complications of the data acquisition process. *

My goal is to provide training for techniques and tools that support structured decision making/decision management in life, innovation and development processes. Not surprisingly, these activities can be related through our decision management framework.

  • My observations and comments may be biased or limited to my experiences. Your experiences may corroborate or contradict my conclusions but the framework should help in that assessment.
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Latest Blog Posts

2020-10-21_A systems engineer-What do you do

A systems engineer? What do you do?

This question comes up and is typically hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have the context. Here’s a short piece addressing this question:

How I Explain to My Relatives What I Do as a Systems Engineer By Fran McCafferty of Vitech Corp.

(2020-10-21)

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2020-10-09_MBSE is the model NOT the tool

MBSE is the model, NOT the tool

The systems metamodel, the system model, and the executable model are within the purview of the systems engineer and MBSE. The simulation, physical and design models are in the purview of the detail engineers, and when combined with MBSE through the systems metamodel, form a digital engineering environment. So, the “M” in MBSE actually refers to the systems metamodel. It is through the systems metamodel that we improve the conduct of systems engineering by focusing on producing an effective system model and thereby refocusing away from the document-based systems engineering approach as the basis of systems design.
Source: MBSE Primer - Vitech Also: MBSE: System Models, Executable Models, and More – Mark Simons Posted on October 24, 2019

I agree with this and there are two implication:

  1. MBSE is not ‘the tools’ used to perform systems engineering but the shared model that should allow interchange of information within and between tools.
  2. In your ‘practicing engineer’ role, you should not have to think about this, hence the idea that SysML should be exposed to individual engineers is absurd.

(2020-10-09)

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