FINAL THOUGHTS

Syenna’s Corner

If you have read Syenna’s Corner in previous editions, you may have a rough idea of my age. In fact, I am nearly as old as written forms of Systems Engineering (SE), but people have been SE-savvy for a lot longer than that, which is my theme this month. I am grateful to Professor Stephen Halliwell for telling me that the ancient Greeks used the term sustema (σύστημα). It referred to many phenomena conceptualized as an organized structure of parts that interact to form a functional whole: for example, this included political constitutions, the human body, musical systems (of intervals, scales etc.), armies, and various other institutions. I am convinced that ShakSEpeare (1564 – 1616) knew about SE. (William was not consistent in the spelling of his own name, so I feel at liberty to tweak it to my purposes.) He devoted much of his intellect to his own famous line: “To SE, or not to SE? That is the question. ” He could have saved himself a lot of trouble, if he had had access to the CMU/SEI report at https://resources.sei.cmu.edu/asset_files/Speci alReport/2012_003_001_34067.pdf. I once asked a senior executive whether we should let the bad stuff happen or head it off with some risk management. ShakSEpeare’s Hamlet puts this so eloquently: “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them?” It is no accident that, in love, Hamlet is OPHELIA’S, which is an anagram of SHOPAILE, which we all know is an acronym of Systems Have Organization, Purpose, Architecture, Interfaces, Life cycles, and Elements. Have you ever worked on a doomed project, for which half the requirements are missing, the ones present are mostly rubbish, and the CEO cut out requirements-analysis activities to save cash? If so, ShakSEpeare has the verse for the moment: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. ” I am sure that ShakSEpeare belonged to an SE society that had to be kept SEcret because it was seen as SEditious by the authorities. Instead of doing what they were told, these people asked dangerous questions such as, “are you sure you understand the problem?” and “how about if we did it a different way?” Further adding to their suspiciousness, they couldn’t explain to mere mortals what they were about, and they talked in a language understood only by themselves, which is ironic given that SE is meant to be a silo-buster. Think, dear reader, how much things have changed in the last 400 years! As part of their induction, members had to learn a list of ShakSEpeare plays and swear never to reveal it; in a Dan-Brown-esque way, this would allow the knowledge to be passed on through the generations. Sadly, an exquisite modern form of torture (a multiplechoice exam) has forced several members to crack, and we now know the list to be as follows:

Merchant of Venice, King John, Lear, Othello, Venus and Adonis, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, Dionysys, Diana. I can now reveal the last part of this puzzle in an SyEN exclusive. I recently came across a 16th -century decoding device, formed as follows. An inner ivory disc is divided into 26 sectors, marked up with the letters of the alphabet. An outer ivory ring, inscribed with the numbers 0 to 25, can be rotated around the inner ring. If the number 1 is positioned against E for Effectiveness (the nirvana of SE), the initial letters of the “playlist” convert to the number 9781118999400. This, of course, is the ISBN number of a well-studied SE handbook.

Answer to last edition’s SE Riddle

In the previous edition of PPI SyEN, I asked, “What was Syenna thinking in this diagram?”

Unfortunately, no correct answers were submitted, but I hope you find the answer interesting:

Syenna was thinking of the familiar “V”-diagram of systems engineering. The word, “cleave”, can mean “to cut apart” or “to bind together”, depending upon its context. (It’s an example of an auto-antonym: a word with multiple meanings, one of which is the opposite of another. Why not submit a riddle of your own, to be published in a future edition of PPI SyEN? Send your answer or riddle to: PPISyEN@PPI-Int.com.

Yours faithfully, and ever grateful that my parents named me after your splendid newsjournal, Syenna

Syenna Margaret Puck is a free-lance journalist, social-media influencer, and figment of some overactive imagination. She lives and works in Europe. https://xkcd.com/2495/

The last wish of a Product Manager: “When I die, I want the developers I have worked with, to lower me into my grave so that they can LET ME DOWN one last time.”

The response from the developers:

“At least the requirement is clear."

(origin unknown; found on LinkedIn)