Systems Engineering versus Project Management, a comparative study

The scope for this Wiki article is to investigate the similarities and differences between standard best practices of the two domains:

• Project Management, as described by the PMI and/or ISO standard practices
• Systems Engineering, as described by the INCOSE systems engineering handbook

and to reflect on how the holistic "requirements management" focus of systems engineering could contribute to improve project management practices .

Some of the inspiration for the article comes from the joint PMI/INCOSE survey on differences and similarities between program management and systems engineering, and possibilities for integrating the two /ref … and ../. However, in this article we go one step down from program to project level and look for particular elements of system engineering worth integrating in basic project management practice.

The article covers:

• Cross-reference comparison of project management and systems engineering
• Detailed comparison of practice for requirements management in the two domains
• The V-model, possible integration in project management practice