SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT — CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE

Project management (PM) and systems engineering (SE) practitioners and academics experience various challenges regarding meaningful interaction while seeking project success. This situation exists despite sophisticated PM and SE software tools, the existing body of knowledge documents of different professional bodies, and numerous publications addressing this challenge. Generally, projects are fragmented from their initiation on the highest level into a ‘technical’ process and a project management process. This paper summarises the outcomes of several research projects undertaken from 2012 until recently to analyse the problem. The outputs of these studies are also compared with contemporary research to present an understanding of the problem and to suggest potential solutions to improve PM and SE interaction. The aim is to provide a starting point for future-focused research to evaluate the proposed improvements.