Project Manager and Systems Engineer: a literature rich reflection on roles and responsibilities

There are several definitions of Systems Engineering (SE) in the literature, each with different definitions of its relationship with Project Management (PM), causing a great deal of misunderstanding. The paper offers a broad and critical discussion of the relevant literature with a deep reflection concerning the historical evolution and state-of-the-art of both the definition of SE and its relationship with PM. This endeavor provides two main results: (i) a conceptual framework to define SE in a project based environment and (ii) a model to identify the best formal interaction between the Project Manager and System Engineer based on the project characteristics.