The people system

Isn´t it curious that when projects succeed, the credit goes to visionary leadership and great teamwork, but when projects fail, the blame is focused on the tools, methods and standards of technology or commercial management? Experienced engineers know that the root cause of both success and failure is attributable to people, yet paradoxically in systems engineering, there is a lack of a credible `people´ system. Some of the issues that routinely make systems engineering difficult include: users keep changing their minds, despite considerable prototyping; top management doesn´t understand the complexity of the issues; there is conflict between customer and supplier, or user and purchaser; problems aren´t raised until its too late, despite the level of experience; the project manager is only interested in meeting dates or budgets; and the endless meetings result in insufficient time to think and work. To what extent do current methods resolve the issues above, addressing the broader dependency of systems on people? This paper explores the `people´ dimension of technology projects, questions the current boundary for systems engineering and proposes a framework to achieve better project performance through people