About This Book

Origin

This book grew from a series of conversations exploring what happens when you take systems engineering seriously — not just for aircraft and software, but for the institutions that shape human life.

The starting point was a simple question: if we try to build something in life — whether in family, in politics, or in engineering — we need to distinguish between goals, requirements, functions, logical architecture, and physical implementation. What happens when you apply this discipline to religion, to political systems, to development methodologies?

The answer turned out to be more interesting than expected.

Approach

Every analysis in this book follows the same method:

1. Define what a system is — establishing a precise working definition before any decomposition begins
2. Decompose the system through the five-level SE hierarchy
3. Compare systems by identifying their shared platform and variation points (product line thinking)
4. Analyse the control structure using STPA to identify how the system can produce outcomes opposite to its goals
5. Propose architectural remedies — structural changes, not just policy adjustments

Technology

This book is built with MkDocs and the Material theme, hosted on GitHub Pages, and deployed automatically via GitHub Actions.

Source: github.com/ccabos/systems

License

This work is a personal research and documentation project.