{"id":431,"date":"2016-05-05T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T06:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/se-trends.de\/?p=431"},"modified":"2016-07-14T08:18:54","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T06:18:54","slug":"interview-with-maik-pfingsten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/interview-mit-maik-pfingsten\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Maik Pfingsten on the German SE community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who does systems engineering and likes to listen to podcasts will be familiar with the Architects of the future<\/a> by Maik Pfingsten. This is just one of many activities with which he is helping to build up the systems engineering community in Germany. Maik started his career as a troubleshooter in SE, and is now an author, speaker and mentor. Maik also founded (and successfully delivered) the Systems Engineering Barcamp. I had a conversation with Maik Pfingsten at the third Berlin Systems Engineering Barcamp:<\/p>\n

You are very active in the German systems engineering scene. What is the status of the SE community in Germany?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don't know if I can answer that in such a generalized and detailed way. I have noticed that the topic is becoming more and more present and more conscious. We have now had the fifth Systems Barcamp and have beaten all records in terms of the number of participants so far. I believe that this is such a complex topic that it will develop over time, especially in the industry, and I am seeing more and more awareness of the topic, especially in medium-sized companies. And with awareness comes interest and people who say: \"That's exciting, I want to get more involved with it\". It feels like the community is growing, although I can't put an absolute figure on it.<\/p>\n

What is important for community building? Key points that come to mind spontaneously - apart from your Barcamp - are: GfSE; SE in education; SE driven by small businesses; SE driven by standards. What drives the whole thing forward?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is important that there are people behind the individual SE topics who drive the topics forward. (Maik Pfingsten)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I believe that all of these pieces of the puzzle are important for advancing the topic, because all of them have a task. With INCOSE, the GfSE is basically an umbrella organization that represents an overarching, organized structure. It therefore has the opportunity to facilitate further training via certificates. This would not be possible with the other pieces of the puzzle. The regional activities and the working group activities of the GfSE, where the topic is examined more or less intensively, are also interesting. In my opinion, the Systems Barcamp, on the other hand, is simply a platform to bring people together who are either already more intensively involved with the topic or simply want to know what they are talking about. Accordingly, I believe that every piece of the puzzle is equally important. It's much more important that there are people behind these topics who are driving them forward, because otherwise they would probably fall asleep over time.<\/p>\n

What do we need to do to train good systems engineers? Specifically: On the one hand, this is possible through INCOSE certification, and on the other hand, there is training at universities. Which path is best and when?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I look at the universities, I think back to my studies: I graduated in 2000 as a mechatronics engineer, a course that was already very much in this direction. However, the overall view was hardly dealt with, especially in the context of project management. In this respect, it is interesting to bring this into the universities and create much more awareness of the various topics. I experience it in my context as a mentor: when it comes to specifications or requirements management, I get the feedback: \"I didn't have this at university, why should I suddenly do this after ten years in the project?\" That's different than if you had at least come into contact with the topic at university. This also applies to other facets of SE.<\/p>\n

The industry must support motivated employees in continuing their education. (Maik Pfingsten)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another point is the focus: Is it an SE developed in IT, or in mechatronics? These are similar activities in terms of role and methodology, but how the system, the product, is developed in practice is very different. An IT system runs on a server, a mechatronics system solves a physical task. Although the roles and methods are similar, there are sometimes significant differences in the way the actual system is handled. And especially in mechatronics, but also in mechanical engineering, this part of the training at universities is very, very important.<\/p>\n

When I look at what is happening with certification, as well as with the GfSE, I think the following is important: the industry, which is now dealing with the topic, which now has people who want to develop accordingly, must provide them with the necessary highly qualified support and give people the opportunity to further their education. In this way, the industry can take over what - also due to history - was simply not learned during studies 10 or 20 years ago. It simply wasn't there.<\/p>\n

We know your previous activities - Future Architect, Barcamp - what are your next plans in the field of SE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have four projects coming up this year. One is, of course, the future architect, which will take on even more nerd themes. I've had feedback from listeners saying they want a lot more technical depth. But there was also an equally large group who said they would rather have leadership or project management topics. Accordingly, there is a second podcast channel that is now starting, called The troubleshooter<\/a> as a new podcast. Then there is the new RE-Barcamp<\/a>which I will simply bring out into the world in 2016 to find out whether people are interested. And finally, I will work on my Blog for creating specifications<\/a> and the connected library.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who does systems engineering and enjoys listening to podcasts will certainly be familiar with Maik Pfingsten's Zukunftsarchitekten. This is just one of the many activities with which he is helping to build up the systems engineering community in Germany. Maik started his career as a troubleshooter in SE and is now an author, speaker and mentor. Maik has also...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,44],"tags":[103,52,102,62,56],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-wissen","tag-community","tag-lehre","tag-maik-pfingsten","tag-offenheit","tag-weiterbildung"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.se-trends.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}