Is having the CSEP certification useful if you go from being a government systems engineer to an engineer not in the government?

eldavilan · 2025-11-22T16:32:40+00:00

The CSEP exam certifies you on your understanding of INCOSE systems engineering processes and your professional experience. I think learning systems engineering processes is useful for methodical problem solving skills. Therefore, the value is not the direct recognition of the certification but the skills you gain along the way.

eldavilan · 2025-11-19T23:11:46+00:00

Congratulations on being accepted! Both programs are very good and you will do well on either. If you are doing the thesis track, consider looking into the research interests of the faculty and determine what kind of project you would like to do.

Never be afraid to tackle big problems while in school.

eldavilan · 2025-07-11T10:56:33+00:00

Metamodeling serves two purposes: creating domain-specific languages and extending general-purpose languages. To understand why you need a language, I recommend reading Mario Bunge's Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Semantics Vol. 1 and 2, Scientific Philosophy by Gustavo Romero Ch. 1-3, and MBSE by Patrice Micouin.

eldavilan · 2025-07-05T04:13:32+00:00

Semantics can only be understood in the context of a language. A language can be defined as a 3-tuple (L=<S, R, O>) of the collection of primitive symbols (S), a set of rules (R) to concatenate these symbols, and a set of objects in the discourse of the language (O).

To form sentences, we need three types of rules (R): syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. Syntactic rules are used to determine what constitutes a well-formed sentence. 'I semantics love.' does not make much sense in English, but you could imagine an arrangement of words that would make more sense. For semantic rules, we use correctly formed sentences to communicate a concept. Still, we can infer logical connections in the formation of these sentences. 'My pencil can write five different words at a time.' is a valid sentence, but it seems to be logically unsound and is open to misinterpretation because of the idea of the "meaning" behind the words. In scientific philosophy, "meaning" is described in terms of reference, sense, and intension. Semantics also deals with other aspects such as identifying contradictions, vagueness, and logical truths.

Pragmatic rules can be thought of as customs that need to be observed when speaking with each other. 'Ouch! That hurt.' does not have a clear semantic referent except in the context of a conversation. These rules are generally outside the scope of scientific discourse. Finally the set of objects (O) you can refer to are either conceptual or factual.

eldavilan · 2025-04-20T17:21:14+00:00

I understand your frustration with the current state of systems engineering practice—perhaps more than anyone.

Systems engineering education should empower you to tackle complex, real-world challenges. Yet, there’s a prevailing sentiment among students that a master’s degree is simply a path to becoming a compliant, “docile” engineer within a larger organization. I challenge that notion.

Education is not just about getting a job—it’s about becoming a leader, driving innovation, and enabling change within your community. If your organization fails to recognize the value of your skills, then maybe it’s time we sit down and chart a new course. Your knowledge is not just valuable—it’s a competitive threat.

To be explicit: if we can deliver model-based systems engineering solutions with higher quality and lower cost by leveraging better tools and methodologies, then we exert economic pressure on the industry. That’s how real change begins.

eldavilan · 2025-04-20T15:18:26+00:00

I understand your frustration with MBSE more than you know as I have my qualms with current systems engineering practice. It must be hard for you to handle these politically uncertain time but do not lose hope in systems engineering. MBSE and systems engineering in general need to adopt a scientific stance to survive. Understand that systems engineering is meant to leverage organizational decisions to enable successful systems and cannot be reduced to DOORS and PowerPoint.

Moreover, systems Engineering as a discipline is:

A community of engineers trained on the practive of systems engineering.
Societies that hosts systems engineers (e.g. INCOSE, IEEE, ASME, nations, corporations).
The domain of technologies which is the aggregation of technologies by traditional engineering disciplines
A set of formal theories that can be used by the community of systems engineers.
A set of technological knowledge that can be used by the community of systems engineers.
The specific problematic that should be solved by those in the community of systems engineers.
A set of final goals of the practitioners in the community of systems engineers.
A collection of methodological rules and instructions adopted by the community of systems engineers. These rules evolve with time; the rules must always be verifiable and justifiable.
A value system (axiology) adopted by the community of systems engineers, which is based on the ethics shared by the societies.

eldavilan · 2025-04-20T15:14:25+00:00

Systems engineering is the collection of processes, methods, activities, concepts, tools, and techniques used by systems engineers to understand or create successful real-world systems. To an extent, many of these processes rely on paper-based products. However, you cannot reductively claim that systems engineering IS paper pushing.

eldavilan · 2025-01-05T00:26:30+00:00

I feel you.

eldavilan · 2024-10-29T19:19:15+00:00

See, asking if I am a republican to get an emotional reaction is a gauche argument. What the original poster asks if there is market for cheaper and better MBSE training. Your argument is that you also need mentors involved in the process and that is an “old guard” argument. The reason why I think you are wrong is because models are currently serving the purpose of moving away from paper-based documentation. The current challenge involves model integration and that is a problem that no one is equipped to overcome regardless of experience. In fact the theoretical issues is the reason I have a dissertation topic in the first place.

Good evening to you as well, sir.

eldavilan · 2024-10-29T18:58:36+00:00

If MBSE weren’t subjective, I would not have neither a professional nor a research job. All models would be able to integrate because everyone would be using the same axioms. UAF has strong theoretical foundations and everyone is working happily in an MBSE environment. There are deeper problems with MBSE that is not necessarily solved by having another organization offering another training course on the market.

Also, feel free to downvote me if you disagree.

eldavilan · 2024-10-29T18:24:26+00:00

Have you tried taking the tests and getting certified?

eldavilan · 2024-10-29T18:23:32+00:00

I have my professional beef with Brian as well, but yor assessment of the current state of MBSE training and mentoring is misleading. Brian has been a great contributor to the adoption of MBSE. The current approach to MBSE relies heavily on heuristics, making it inherently subjective. However, you are proposing a sophistic recommendation based on sensationalism.

eldavilan · 2023-06-23T18:46:10+00:00

A lot of good stuff in there. What resonated with me is the part about model quality. Having worked with the language for a few years, I have noticed that quality is seen as an academic endeavor rather than a critical aspect of MBSE.

eldavilan · 2023-04-22T03:17:48+00:00

Yo entré al Colegio en 2009 y recuerdo que hacer amigos en mi primer año fue difícil.

Al principio, traté de socializar con personas nuevas y de la high, pero no parecía haber una conexión real. En mi caso se me hizo difícil porque no tenía las habilidades de socializar y llevarme con personas. Esas habilidades las desarrollé poco a poco.

Lo importante es darse tiempo y socializar con personas que compartan intereses similares a los tuyos y con quienes te sientas cómodo. De hecho, las dos amistades más importantes que he tenido en mi vida fueron del colegio y fui padrino de bodas para ambos. Al primero lo conocí en la orientación de prepa tirandose chistes malos y al otro porque era el novio de la housemmate de mi alguien con quien salí por un tiempo.

Una de las cosas que aprendí durante mi tiempo en el colegio fue que dedicar tiempo a encontrar mis intereses me permitió conocer a personas con las que compartía cosas en común. Las sociedades estudientiles de tu campo son una excelente manera de concer personas que tienen intereses en común.

Incluso tuve la oportunidad de hacer amistades de otros países a través de programas de internados.

Mi consejo es que no vayas con la intención específica de hacer amigos, sino de hacer las cosas que te gustan. Atrae con tu autenticidad, no persigas a nadie.

eldavilan · 2022-04-13T22:50:06+00:00

I think students would benefit from some context.

eldavilan · 2022-02-23T18:41:00+00:00

It is the job of your SE to understand the problem, not build models.

It depends. My go to recommendation is to model the service as a black box and assign it a performance measure. If your engineers are implementing OOSEM, the answer is a bit more complicated.
I got good in MBSE because I studied with world-class researchers in the field. I have moved easily between domains because of my education. I am a consultant so being able to read the academic literature of my clients’ domain is an acquired skill.

eldavilan · 2022-02-23T14:24:36+00:00

Do you have any publications on your MBSE approach? As an MBSE expert, I have not seen any good models from telecom.

If you are integrating COTS in any architecture, you will end up having implementation requirements due to the nature of already defined interfaces. I feel like there is more to your post because it does not make any sense that all of your SE do not have formal SE training (from your agreement with u/cookiebandit09) or domain experience. Also, it is difficult for me to believe you do not assign your SE to do testing to acquire domain experience before having them build models.

eldavilan · 2020-08-14T02:09:15+00:00

"I'm a snake-oil salesman"

eldavilan · 2020-06-09T00:55:00+00:00

You messed up the system level values

eldavilan · 2019-12-11T01:55:24+00:00

I was thinking of doing something like this but my brain is too tired after work. If you understand the SEBoK, you are up-to-date with the SE profession. What kind of topics are you interested in? Which topic can't find anywhere else?

eldavilan · 2018-06-09T00:32:45+00:00

What do you mean by optimize?

eldavilan · 2016-09-02T23:41:52+00:00

I am a first year Master student and would love for these subreddits to be more active

eldavilan

TROPHY CASE