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In recent years, many organizations have embraced digital engineering (DE) as a strategy for enhancing integration and interoperability across the system lifecycle. However, research into the development of DE practices has shown that a lack of consensus on terminology can hinder progress. Common terms such as ‘digital thread’, ‘digital twin’, and ‘authoritative source of truth’ are defined inconsistently across domains and organizations, creating friction in digital information exchange. Automated, efficient information exchange requires a precise lexicon to facilitate understanding for humans and machines. The INCOSE Digital Engineering Information Exchange (DEIX) Working Group is working to address this challenge by developing a formal ontology of DE concepts. This article addresses some of the key terminology challenges facing DE practitioners and describes how a machine-readable ontology can help to create a shared understanding of DE and enable more effective implementation of DE practices.

In systems engineering, elegance is often associated with simplicity and control, but this risks ignoring the deeper systemic nature of elegance as coherence between complexity and purpose. This article reframes elegance not as minimalism, but as the systemic sufficiency of structure, behavior, and context. Drawing from systems science foundations and the triad of fit–form–function, we argue that true systemic elegance arises when relational complexity is harnessed, not suppressed, to yield emergent coherence across levels. Elegant systems are those that integrate complexity without introducing unnecessary complication; they achieve just enough richness to engage with the variety of their environment, while avoiding overdesign. This balance is not accidental; it results from rigorous architecting and purposeful design. Using examples and distinctions, this article offers a framework for systems engineers to recognize, cultivate, and evaluate elegance as a dynamic outcome of systemic coherence.

We have entered an era of rapid change and increasing uncertainty. The biggest mistake we can make as systems engineers is ignoring this change. The term “uncertainty” is deeply connected to complexity for many communities, including INCOSE's Complex Systems Working Group (CSWG). As uncertainty or complexity increases, our experience, and indeed logic, suggests that the practices and techniques developed for a world of sufficient certainty are no longer enough, no matter how gifted the engineer. At this point, it is essential to change our mindset from “I know enough” to “I know I am wrong about something”. This mindset shift triggers a desire and need for continuous learning, new practices and techniques which embrace different viewpoints, learning through failure, and results in flexible and adaptable systems. The work of the CSWG, described in the article, is to identify and create suitable practices for the practitioner systems engineer in this new, uncertain, and complex age. We are aiming to “burst the bubble of complexity” and enable engineers to deal effectively with uncertainty and complexity. But the pace of change is fast, the complexity landscape is vast, and the tradecraft still emerging. Hence, the only way to address this complexity challenge sufficiently is to recruit communities of experts with diverse views who can work collaboratively towards these common aims.

A heuristic relates to a formulation based on experts' experience, which draws on observed common patterns and serves as a guide in investigating or solving a problem. A transdisciplinary field, systems engineering involves many useful heuristics, as it integrates the gamut of engineering disciplines in defining a system throughout its lifecycle. To be usable, heuristics should be memorable and pithy, and the consequences of applying them should be predictable. To be predictable, a heuristic should provide insights into how and why it works in a particular context. The first step to increase the capability of systems engineering heuristics was the creation of the I-SHARE–INCOSE Systems Heuristics Application Repository, a curated knowledge base of over 600 systems engineering-related heuristics covering systems engineering competencies, lifecycle stages, expertise, operational domains, system attributes, and more. Here, we describe a process for guiding the systems engineering community on how to validate, test, and assess heuristics, and how the systems engineering community can engage with I-SHARE to benefit from the heuristics in it and collectively improve their capabilities.

A significant challenge to the success of systems engineering solutions is the risk of unintended consequences. This has traditionally been considered to be a real but unactionable requirement. Here, we analyse the notion of unintended consequences and propose an equivalent but actionable requirement, which we relate to the concept of ‘harmony’. The implication of this notion is that in order to assure solution success it has to be architected in concert with considering the structure and dynamics of the system of systems in which it will be deployed. We conducted a study of natural ecosystems as a case study from which we could glean relevant architecting principles. From this we developed a general model of the structure and dynamics of a complex system of systems. From this study and model we distilled a set of general principles for systems architecting. Along the way we introduced a framework for understanding the relationships between the notions elegant, complex, complicated, and simple. We also introduce a new perspective on emergence at the level of parts, supplementing classical notions of emergence at the level of the whole.

A range of experts present a series of short case studies and field examples where elegant solutions emerged to solve complex engineering challenges in network protocols, urban transport, and astrophysics. Their responses illustrate the importance of clarity of purpose and good architecture transforming intricate problem spaces into robust, enduring systems demonstrating that elegance is a core engineering principle, not an afterthought.

This article provides a brief guide addressing the inconsistent use of “complexity” and related terms across different disciplines and situations. Definition variability often leads to miscommunication, even within organizations like the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). This guide offers practical advice tailored for different audiences on how to effectively use and interpret “complexity” in transdisciplinary contexts. Rather than prescribing a single definition, it promotes a common understanding by illustrating definitional differences and providing techniques to clarify usage. This approach aims to enhance communication, and lay groundwork for a unified scientific basis for “complexity” within systems engineering.

Experts provide their personal perspectives, conceptual frameworks, and behavioral insights that shape how systems engineers approach complex challenges to illuminate how elegance also emerges from how we think, frame, and engage with complexity.