Although usually well-funded, systems development projects are often late to market and over budget. Worse still, many are obsolete before they can be deployed or the program is cancelled before delivery. Clearly, it is time for a new approach. With coverage ranging from the complex characteristics and behaviors of enterprises to the challenges they pose for engineering and technology, Enterprise Systems Engineering: Advances in the Theory and Practice examines the impacts of enterprise processes and leading-edge technologies on the evolution of an enterprise.

As much about history as it is about systems engineering, this book provides a snapshot of the early thinking in enterprise systems engineering—a snapshot taken before the memory of its perspective is corrupted by time. It discusses emerging methods essential to successful systems engineering. The editors define and examine key building blocks of the evolving field of enterprise systems engineering. They address the issues of the changing nature of systems engineering, lay out a recommended direction for the future, and provide a unified basis for moving toward a mature discipline with the expanded scope.

During the last decade, something has changed in the way people work together. Seldom do isolated groups work on local problems to build stove-pipe solutions and systems seldom are developed in a social, political, economic, or technical vacuum. Yet concerted attempts to better implement systems engineering seemed not to improve the situation. Standing on the threshold of a new era in systems engineering, the editors point an arrow in the direction of systems engineering evolution, a direction that is equal parts social change and technological change.