Risk Management and Normalization of Risk

Once in a while we come across a failed project, poor decision or worse a catastrophe. The individual or team behind the decision might be very well experienced. When teams take on risks and plan well ahead for the impacts of these potential scenarios, they build competence and are well equipped to handle these risks. However is many situations the risks are mitigated and no negative impact is ever realized, causing teams to be more aggressive in risk taking, and hence the normalization.


In other words, successes and error-free delivery could lead us to gradually accepting higher levels of risks simply because the subsequent effect from a previous risk never occurred. When this normalization occurs we start to operate outside of acceptable parameters without realizing, potentially falling into trouble.

Learning Centered Education

A learning-centered environment is one that focuses on the needs of the student rather than others involved in the educational process. Student needs range from administrative services, to tutoring and instruction, and include everything in between such as life services.

A learning centered environment ensures that the student is empowered to learn through a balanced power in the classroom, critical thinking, student research and discovery, improved modeling of learning by educators, learning conducive environments, acting on feedback and tight institutional integration with the mission of realizing mastery learning rather than curve grading and ensuring that learning is positioned in a well-applied context to retain and utilize the knowledge learned.

Technical Arguments

In order for a systems engineer to come up with a decision, there has to be a solid argument. Arguments are not conflicts, but rather expressions of ideas with evidence and facts. Arguments should be verifiable and are not based on emotions.

I am teaching a debate class for middle schoolers this weekend. So what is the link between that and this blog. Well, everyone needs to debate. Debate is not just for politicians, attorneys and TV host shows. Engineers need to debate technical ideas, requirements and design constraints. the systems engineer needs to ensure that technical arguments are backed up by solid facts. These facts need to be verifiable, just like requirements.

Teaching engineers how to debate is as important as teaching attorneys how to present a case in court. Dealing effectively with complicated and complex systems requires no only engineering and science, but also art in the form of architecture, soft skills and critical thinking.