Originally Posted by
MechEngr
What it really was was a failure of Systems Architects, a relatively new and somewhat toxic addition to engineering. This bunch of hand wavers sit between management and promises made to customers and the actual engineers and are responsible for creating the performance specifications for the hardware and software. Which is exactly where flawed software like MCAS gets born. The good SAs are great - Kelly Johnson of the Skunk Works was one. Anyone living in PowerPoint land? View with great skepticism.
As a long-time systems guy, I certainly won't argue with that. In recent years, those slots have increasingly been filled by people who are better at impressing the suits than they are at real engineering -- and whose mission in life is to find easy jobs. But the good ones are invaluable.
There are, of course, HF people at Boeing, as there are at other aircraft manufacturers. There's a lot of evidence, however, that the products, in the end, often don't reflect the best current understanding of the discipline. If I design a system with the expectation that operators will act and react in particular ways, within some stated time frames, and that doesn't happen in the real world, it's not only the behavior of the operators that needs careful examination.