Online course

Systems Thinking

based on SoTA practices in entrepreneurship,
engineering and management
Main page / Open endedness / Systems Thinking
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About the course

Beginner Level

No degree or prior experience required

Self-paced learning online course

2-3 months to complete (suggested pace of 10-15 hours/week)

Open-endedness

This course is included in the educational program
The educational program optional subscription
From $25/month Now for free!

In the real world, cause and effect are often spatially or temporally separated from one another. To engage with these dynamics, one needs approaches that go beyond applying single theories to calculate direct impacts in a context. For this kind of approach, trans-disciplinary thinking is required. This course is about practical ways to engage that kind of thinking.

The main idea is to prevent unnecessary time wasting for a team member in a project or a person in life, which often comes from inattention to essential details. What exactly is essential in a particular context, and how to write this down so it is not forgotten. We cover these aspects in the course.

Based on international standards and public documents for systems and enterprise engineering (e.g., ISO 15288, ISO 42010, ISO 15926, IEC 81346, OMG Essence), the course gives an understanding of the systems thinking framework. After some training, you will be able to quickly and automatically assess the situation in real team projects: not to “reinvent the wheel” in every new project but to use rich SoTA experience in entrepreneurship, engineering, and management.

What this course teaches
  • How to put the whole project in your head: not to miss something important in the hustle and bustle
  • How to overcome complexity: think about a complex project in parts without losing sight of the whole
  • How to communicate: engineers, managers, and entrepreneurs agree on what kind of system they are making
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What tasks will the course help you to solve?

To keep your attention in the project

At any moment of the project, systems thinking makes it necessary to focus on entrepreneurial opportunities, external project roles, system definition and system realization, works, and methods of performing these works by the team.

You will become familiar with the project system diagram as a checklist that links all of these objects to track the project's status.

Not to lose touch with reality

Systems thinking requires changing the physical world: if the project does not make a change by creating a system, you do not do it at all. Nothing changes!

We will teach you how to understand what is changing in the physical world if you create computer programs, services, documentation, and enterprises.

To define your own and others' roles in the project

Until the 1980s, systems thinking did not pay attention to people in the project. Modern systems thinking links with different types of roles concerned with the project. It is not trivial to think not about the people themselves but their roles: the roles of engineers, managers, entrepreneurs, law enforcement officers, doctors, etc.

The course teaches to distinguish a person in projects, his project/activity role, position, and qualifications.

To think the same way about an enterprise and its products

Systems thinking is equally applicable to entrepreneurship (who and how uses the product), engineering (how to realize the product), and management (who and how operates the enterprise).

The course is designed for

Engineers

  • who got a product, service, or software that is more difficult to develop than they can digest right now
  • who have matured to managerial tasks and realized that they lack knowledge

Entrepreneurs

who need to start a new business

Managers

who need to negotiate with their engineers

A broad audience

  • faced with unusual projects and having difficulty in formulating them
  • interested in up to date version of systems thinking

Course Content

11 Chapters
173 self-test cases
897 author’s clarifications

  • On Thinking
  • Realization and Definition of the System
  • Roles
  • System levels
  • The System-of-interest and Its Supra System
  • How to Define Systems
  • System Modeling
  • Requirements and Architecture
  • Neither the life nor the cycle
  • Life Cycle Model
  • Systems Project Model
Download the detailed course description to get more information about topics
Our Graduated Students
Open-endedness educational program

We provide our educational program for you to become
self-collected in mind and body and understand ontology, communication, and systems thinking.

EEM Institute is engaged in strengthening the intelligence of its students so that they can quickly navigate future projects and be successful.

We broaden our students horizons to a range of professional areas of interest including management, systems engineering, and entrepreneurship while showing how systems thinking forms the foundation for all of these professional topics. This will help you create and operate multi-disciplinary projects.

The program contains next courses:

The “Open-endedness” educational program has a optional subscription from $25/month is now available for free.
Future developed courses will be added to your subscription automatically.
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