The outcome of Project Helios seeks to disrupt the Systems Engineering professional development experience by radically improving the efficiency of understanding and retaining of key concepts in preparation of the Model User Exam on the OMG United Architectural Framework (UAF).

This post seeks to provide an introduction to the project’s main deliverable, provide weekly snapshot to the project status as well as share the return of experience.

What is Project Helios?

Firstly I’ll reintroduce the vision of Fitzgerald Systems:

Fitzgerald Systems aspires to promote resolution, humility, industry, and frugality while advocating for equal opportunity, freedom of choice, the pursuit of happiness, and holistic thinking. Fitzgerald Systems seeks to bridge the gap between systems engineering practitioners and academia, advance General Systems Theory, and implement best practices across various sectors. Our strategy includes curating quality academic and case study resources, developing cohesive frameworks, and delivering training that supports professional growth and the application of systems thinking principles.

Project Helios involves the development and curation of decks of flash cards covering many concepts from the OMG UAF Domain Metamodel v1.2 and OMG UAF Modeling Language v1.2 with the intention that these flash cards are used by prospective examinees to prepare for the OMG UAF Model User exam. These flash cards are intended to be used in conjunction with a UAF course that is planned for latter in 2026.

Why Flash Cards?

I had a formal education in engineering but the systems engineering domain was altogether new to me. When I was studying for the SEP exam (at the time it was for v4 of the Handbook) I relied heavily on creating flash cards to capture key concepts which I then used to practice active recall. By methodically and iteratively going through the handbook I gradually improved my understanding of the content which I found in all honesty, at times, heavy with non-intuitive terms (‘top down integration’ anybody?). Flash cards were instrumental to myself making an entry into the SE community and perhaps others could also benefit from having these flash cards available.

Which leads me back to a segment of the Fitzgerald Systems vision: support professional growth, whilst advocating for equal opportunity and the virtue of industry. By making these flash cards available for a nominal fee I hope to facilitate the growth of the SE community.

Project Status – Updated 11th January, 2026

• Start Date is January 2nd, 2026;
• Target completion date is February 20th, 2026;
• Target release date is February 23rd, 2026;
• Target flash card creation rate: 8 / day for 400 cards;
• Actual flash cards created: 92;
• Actual flash card creation rate (average): 9.2 / day;
• Estimate number of flash cards to be between 400 to 500 (at the current rate the maths say 460 cards but there is a large margin of error at the start).

Pre-Order (finishes at February 23rd, 2026) now Available

I’ve included the Flash Cards to the list of services now available form the store:

Pre-Order!! OMG UAF Model User Flash Cards – Fitzgerald Systems

Leave a comment if you have any questions!