Enterprise engineering, non-engineering ​

Systems of creation ("creators", removing the word for the type of meta-meta-model) are also systems, only one should not forget that their entire existence is connected to the system of interest, and therefore it is unnecessary to say that they are the system of interest themselves. However, they can very well be "our system" for managers as well as engineers of the enterprise.

If you deliver any product for use within some enterprise or organizational unit (or its part, if not referring to the whole enterprise or organizational unit as a whole), then it will be a supersystem for your product. The clocks that you supply to an automobile plant can be used by the plant workers (not "clock users") either in the cars manufactured by the plant (and the plant workers are not "clock users" in this case) or in the plant's workshop (and then the plant workers first act as developers of the workshop as a supersystem for the clocks, and then as individuals interested in time, "clock users").

In the case of enterprise engineering, all systemic considerations remain, but the terminology and practices change. For example, departments are referred to as modules of the enterprise (less commonly called organizational units, but systems thinking also draws attention to collegial bodies such as working groups, councils, and committees), organizational roles are the functional parts of the enterprise, the functions of organizational roles are practices, and enterprise configuration management is called accounting. Also, it is important to note that organizational units do not develop, but organize, and manufacturing is not production but leadership (people who are rational explain how their organizational unit works, what organizational position they should occupy there, collaborating with other people - this is leadership).

When it comes to organizational systems, the concept of enterprise engineering became popular a couple of decades ago, but the terminology there did not become as engineering-oriented and general-systems as expected. If we are talking about other types of systems (medicine, law enforcement, dance, politics, etc.), then the terminology might differ even more from the terminology of engineering and system thinking. In education, the focus is on engineering mastery, and the same roles are highlighted: a visionary is a culture bearer, a designer is a methodologist, an engineering technologist is a methodist, and so on (more details can be found in the "Personal Engineering" course).

Words are not important, what matters is the overall structure of thinking (what to focus on in all these projects: systems thinking deals with managing attention). Words are important: without the terminology of a specific domain, you will not understand what is being discussed at all.

In each project, you will need to compare "apples from textbooks" with "apples from real life": to identify concepts from various domains that correspond to the concepts of systems thinking. And then think systematically, meaning to thoroughly think about what systems thinking points out, securely holding that important aspect in the collective attention of project participants, and not allowing the attention to scatter.