Coaching Valuable Systems Engineering Behaviors

The JPL Systems Engineering Advancement (SEA) Project was launched in FY2004 to advance the practice of systems engineering at JPL, and to address the three key aspects of change: people, process and technology. A significant portion of the People component of the SEA Project is devoted to systems engineering training. The SEA trains systems engineers according to a three-pronged systems engineering competency model. This competency model includes technical domain knowledge, understanding of systems engineering standards, processes and practices, and highly valued behavioral attributes. The SEA Project utilized a rigorous process to identify a list of highly valued personal behaviors of systems engineers. The process yielded common themes and clusters of competencies with associated behaviors. The behavioral attributes fall into four broad themes: leadership, communication, problem solving and systems thinking, and attitudes and attributes. This paper summarizes the method, findings, and conclusions of the study of behavioral competencies of highly regarded systems engineers at JPL. It details the competencies and associated behaviors for each of the themes in depth, and discusses the Lab's experience to date in coaching and inculcating these behaviors into systems engineers on the job.