Metadata Enabled Systems Engineering Thinking Tool
MESTT is designed to assist in organizing and defining messy problems that are derived from a mix of technical, economic, social, and organizational issues; problems wherever they might exist. It is designed to support Type I systems engineers as they grapple with complex unstructured issues. This is at the fuzzy front end of the engineering process where the engineering method is defined as “the use of heuristics for causing the best change in a poorly understood situation within the available resources” (Koen, 2003). As we define the systems problem, we move from unstructured data into structured information. A form of this is related to “data mining” but our tool is designed for use by a systems engineer in which their knowledge and understanding plays an important role in structuring the data. In contrast to MEST, current systems engineering tools assume that information is well structured before it is useful. A significant portion of systems engineering work organizing data and information in such a for that allows for the efficient management of change as the system is realized.