Neil Siegel, USC Viterbi

Title: A theory of development for complex engineered systems

Abstract: Society depends in an essential way on modern engineered systems, but the development  
 of such  systems remains problematic: a significant majority of such efforts fail. Dr. Neil Siegel spent
 many years in  industry “fixing” such problem engineering projects, and through that  experience  
 developed insight regarding what is a common recurring cause of such failures, and also developed
 a theoretical method for decreasing the probability of that recurring failure mode.  In addition, he
 had the opportunity to apply this method to a large number of actual engineering development
 projects.  In today’s talk, he explains the causes of such failures, his corrective theory, and some of
 the results of its actual application.  Potential implications for future development efforts are also
 discussed.