Basic Training to Become a Systems Engineer
Here is the thing. You hear or read everywhere people telling you all the great things people can do during the lock down to improve their career, but no one gives you some specific ideas. Well, here are my $ 0.02 for those of you who would like to learn about Systems Engineering.
I have listed several online courses that I have found useful for those of you who would like to have a better understanding of systems engineering. All of them are just fundamentals. If you are an experienced engineer, there might be other courses you will find more useful instead of this list.
Unfortunately, some of the platforms that had free courses before have changed their policies, so you may have to spend some extra money, but I can assure you is well spent. (and no, I am not getting a single penny from any of the platforms for advertising them :-) ). Nevertheless, Coursera has some trial period before actually paying for the course, so take advantage of it to check if it satisfies your needs before buying it.
Introduction to Systems Engineering:
This course will provide you all the basics related to Systems Engineering. If you have ever wonder what systems engineering is all about and would like to get a general overview, this course is for you. Coursera comes with some tests and a certificate that you can add on your LinkedIn profile later on once you have completed the training. Please be aware that the course is generic, so it does not aim for any specific industry.
Project Management:
Systems engineering is a combination of technical guidance plus project management activities. I would also recommend this training, which provides all the basics of Project Management. If you are already an experienced project manager, of course, this course is not for you. For those cases, I would say that you get certified through some of the most common organisms (PMI or IPMA). This course instead is just to get you started on Project Management activities, which is also relevant for Technical Leaders, Software PMs, Test Managers, and all the different roles which require project management skills:
Writing requirements:
Any systems engineer must know how to write requirements. It is a fundamental part of the job. High skills are needed to write requirements correctly. People need the training to be able to write consistent, unambiguous, and very well understood requirements for a proper product development cycle.
This course explains in a very understandable way how to write requirements:
Embedded Product Development:
If you are interested in Embedded Systems, you may prefer to take this training as well. It focuses on the product development life cycle of that specific type of product. The course is generic enough, and it covers aerospace as well as automotive. I recommend it for newcomers to these types of industries.
There a whole bunch of resources available online, but at least, these above, I know their content, so I can tell you that for beginners are quite useful.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com. in May 2020
