THE HELIX PROJECT
Helix began in 2012 as a research study on what makes systems engineers effective. Funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the US Department of Defense, the impetus was an understanding that systems engineering was important to the DoD, but the organization really had no way of understanding how good their people were at systems engineering. Over time, the research evolved to include perspective on what makes an organization good at enabling systems engineering.
The research questions Helix strove to answer were:
• What are the characteristics of systems engineers?
• What makes systems engineers effective and why?
• What can organizations do to help their systems engineers be more effective?
• What factors beyond the workforce are critical to an organization’s ability to do good systems engineering?
WHAT MAKES HELIX UNIQUE?
Helix is not the first project that looked at systems engineering effectiveness, but it is the first of it’s kind to focus on gathering empirical data around the systems engineering effectiveness of individuals.
Over the 8 years of the research task, Helix looked at this problem in a number of ways:
• In-depth interviews – interviews were conducted with systems engineers and their leadership, managers, and peers. Transcript data from these interviews totals over 6,000 pages. Qualitative analysis and data mining techniques were used to make sense of the this wealth of information and provided crucial insights to Helix.
• In-depth interviews – interviews were conducted with systems engineers and their leadership, managers, and peers. Transcript data from these interviews totals over 6,000 pages. Qualitative analysis and data mining techniques were used to make sense of the this wealth of information and provided crucial insights to Helix.
• Surveys – over 200 people participated in the Helix surveys, providing a rich dataset on the factors that impact systems engineers and organizations that try to do systems engineering. Insights on culture, governance, structure, and teaming for systems engineering effectiveness were pulled from the survey data and are reflected in Helix.
• Pilots – Helix has worked with a number of organizations to pilot programs that utilize the Helix findings to improve effectiveness. Insights from these pilots were fed back into our models and approaches.
We are the only group in the world with this level of rigorous data to back up our recommendations for systems engineering.
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND COMPLEX PROBLEM SOLVING
Though the original focus of Helix was on systems engineering, many disciplines have identified with the Helix framework. Though some details will differ depending on the discipline, many principles of Helix are generalizable. In particular, the skillsets of effective systems engineers, which take into account more than just technical skills, give unique insight into the skills required for complex problem solving.
