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Skoltech President Co-Authors New System Architecture Book

Cover of "System Architecture - Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems". The new book was coauthored by Skoltech president Ed Crawley, with Bruce Cameron (MIT) and Daniel Selva (Cornell University).

The cover of “System Architecture – Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems”. The new book was coauthored by Skoltech president Ed Crawley, with Bruce Cameron (MIT) and Daniel Selva (Cornell University).

Press release 28.04.2015

A new book coauthored by Skoltech President Edward Crawley, addresses one of the hottest – and critical – questions in engineering: how can early decision making process of system architecture improve value delivery in complex products and system?

Crawley, who has conducted on product development research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and NASA and joined forces with MIT’s Bruce Cameron (Director, System Architecture Lab), and Prof. Daniel Selva (Cornell). The result is the book System Architecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems, published by Pearson in the US. The text is the product of 20 years of research and teaching at MIT and includes a foreword by Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin.

System architecture is defined as the early decision making process in complex systems.  It connotes the DNA of the system, and forms the basis for competitive advantage.  There are over 100,000 professionals working in the world today with the title System Architect, and many more practicing the role of the system architect under different titles.

One aspect of the book’s raisons d’être is revealed when the authors set out to explain that “although some of the standard decision support tools remain applicable, there is a need for tools that can deal with subjectivity, ambiguity, expert knowledge, and explanation.”

The text focuses on how to capture experience and analysis about early system decisions, and how to choose architectures that meet stakeholder needs, integrate easily, and evolve flexibly.

It builds from foundational examples, such as pumps, circuits, and sorting algorithms, to complex systems in networking, aircraft and hybrid cars.

These examples are built on the development experience of the authors in communications, transportation, mobile advertising, finance, robotics, and medical devices, ranging in complexity from farm equipment to the International Space Station.

Contributors include Dr. Victor Tang, former special advisor to the CEO of IBM, and Dr. Willard Simmons, CTO of DataXu, a leading demand-side platform for online advertising.

Contact information:
Skoltech Communications
+7 (495) 280 14 81

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