Coherent Decision Solutions
(Structured Decision Management, Systems Engineering and the Productivity through Knowledge Management that results)
OK, "us" is a bit aggrandizing. Feel free to read "us" & "we" as "me".
I have two focus areas of interest: Systems Engineering and Decision Management. Systems Engineering as career and Decision Management as a powerful supporting tool-set. My introduction to structured decision management was in support of systems engineering as I was transitioning from practitioner to company advocate.
The link between these areas is that systems engineering relies on 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, (SDM) can be applied to challenging decisions with an effort commensurate with the complexity of the goal being addressed and complications of the data acquisition process.
Observation and Opinion
Systems Engineering as a discipline has (at least) since the mid-2000’s been redefining itself in non-productive ways.
Vision
Structured Decision Management: Individuals, groups, teams and organizations apply transparent, scalable, structured method for making and implementing impactful decisions. The captured, reusable decisions are a resource for storing and leveraging personal and corporate knowledge to accelerate consensus building, increase reuse and spend more time on the issues that matter.
Systems Engineering (SyE): The role of systems engineering is to provide technical support in defining the transition from the current state to a future desired state. SyE captures the as-is condition and formalizes the description of the desired condition to be provided by the engineered system. SyE accounts for the set of stakeholders across the lifecycle of the future system and develops a feasible architecture that will be the framework for the solution system. SyE assists sub-system and supporting systems development, helping rationalize conflicts during development and evaluating the solution during integration, system validation and release.
Mission
Structured Decision Management: Provide a simple, scaleable, structured method for individual and group decision making, capture, organization and reuse available to everyone, via affordable training and tools. Provide a simple ‘on-ramp’ for individuals and a scaleable solution for companies looking to begin their journey with decision management and systems engineering.
Systems Engineering: Musings and examples from my years applying systems thinking and problem solving methods to systems projects
Productivity/Knowledge Management: Unite the ideas from structured decision management and systems engineering to enhance the effectiveness of individuals and groups.
I help individuals and groups apply repeatable decision making techniques and tools to manage strategic decisions over time. These Structure Decision Management/Risk Management (SDMRM) techniques are meant to be transferred to the users for their continued independent application.
Individuals, groups or teams can improve the critical decisions they make and enhance the quality of outcomes while decreasing cycle time. An individual can be attempting to choose a college or location to live. A team can track the decisions made from product inception through concept, decision, manufacturing and release. The methods are trainable, repeatable and scalable.
Background
My longest experience was as part of a relatively small engineering organization in an “independent” division of a large corporation. This provided involvement with corporate initiatives in software and systems and access to corporate tools and training but with budget and resource constraints when implementing in the smaller company.
More about me on LinkedIn
Contact me: bruce.lerner@cdsolns.com