SYSE.24:8 - Common Anti-Patterns and How to Avoid Them

The following ten rows document recurring failures and their repairs.

Anti-pattern	Working symptom	Repair
Make-or-buy word comparison	Rows say buy, build, outsource, AI, or reuse without the result-bearing arrangement behind them.	Replace every row with a whole arrangement that answers the common questions in §4.3.
Demonstration versus production comparison	A polished external demonstration is compared with unfinished but fully burdened internal work.	Apply the same operating conditions, configuration, acceptance evidence, integration, support, and exit basis.
Award as result	Supplier selection or contract award is reported as if the System, Work, access, capability, or episteme had been obtained and accepted.	Keep commercial selection, Work, production, integration, acceptance, and use as separate results.
Provider absorbs engineering	Outsourcing is treated as removal of interface, configuration, assurance, affected-System, and change responsibility.	State what remains with the receiving project and which provider result supports each reliance.
AI as an arrangement	An AI Agent is a peer row beside purchase and internal development.	Place the Agent inside each arrangement where it may perform named Work; state capability, access, authority, evidence, stop, and recovery.
Method development as free support	A required new Method is hidden inside an option with no time, evidence, or capability consequence.	Treat it as a separate enabling realization branch, or as the sought result when Method development is the decision itself.
Lowest visible price	Purchase or provider price wins while integration, support, knowledge, opportunity cost, exit, and displaced capability remain uncounted.	Restore parity and obtain the financial and specialist results that can change the choice.
One scalar hides a protected condition	A weighted score compensates for a safety, authority, evidence, or exit failure that the receiving use cannot accept.	Keep thresholds and partial order visible; reject arrangements that violate protected conditions.
Procurement umbrella	Systems Engineering silently chooses tender, contract, incentive, legal duty, financing, organization, or operating policy.	Request the specialist result and use only its consequence for the obtaining decision.
Endless option inventory	The team keeps expanding market and technology lists after no new arrangement can change the next choice.	Use `C.19` for exploration policy and `C.11` for the bounded probe-or-choose stop.