ⓘ This event has already ended.
Imagine a systems engineer who's extremely knowledgeable about technology, who's a master of methods, tools, and processes. They're basically perfect. But they're missing something small. Nothing tangible. It's almost hard to explain. They lack the soft skills. This is just whining at a high level—after all, they know their craft? In an age of skilled labor shortages, how bad can it be if someone has weaknesses in an area for which there isn't even a German term? I'd like to answer precisely this question with a quote as a counter-question.
A systems engineer … transfers the customer's mindset and his recognition of the system behavior to the members of the engineering team. Wouldn't such a capability rely much more on soft skills than mastership of tools and processes?
(Source: Siemens Mobility, 2018)
In my opinion, it's often the soft skills that decide between victory and defeat. And it's also the area where it's most difficult to identify and correct a deficit. If someone lacks requirements engineering know-how, the problem can be solved quickly. Read a book, attend a training course, and gradually conduct requirements reviews. The quality of the requirements will improve. The same applies to a modeling language or the use of tools. All of this is relatively easy to manage. With soft skills, things are quite different. You can't simply retrain them. It's often not easy to identify where the problem actually lies. My recommendation is to find a mentor who can look over your shoulder during project work and gain insight into what can be improved. Soft skills are a broad field. And what's easy for one person may be a problem for another. In a traditional training course, you wouldn't even know where the problem lies. This only becomes apparent in a real project, when someone observes the whole thing from the outside. My thesis is therefore: If you want to improve your soft skills, you have to work on them and bring a mentor or an observer into the project :-)
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| Dipl.-Ing. Goran Madzar, Partner, Senior Systems Engineer E-mail: madzar@medtech-ingenieur.de Phone: +49 9131 691 240 |
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Event tip VDI Working Group Systems Engineering (AK-SE) in Erlangen
If you are interested in the topic, I also recommend our Systems Engineering working group at 28.02.2019 in Erlangen. The event will focus on soft skills in systems engineering. The event will take place at our premises starting at 5:30 p.m. and, as always, is free of charge. However, the number of participants is limited. There will be a keynote speech from Siemens, followed by four sessions in a barcamp format. Food and drinks will, of course, be provided. More information and registration can be found at the following link on Xing:
Stop registering!
The Systems Engineering working group took place on February 28, 2019, and was a complete success!
Soft skills are a subject where you never stop learning, and where I think it's fun to improve. I look forward to welcoming some of the blog readers to our AK-SE.
Best regards
Goran Madzar