Jonathan R. Wood - ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT SEMINARS (continued)

Part II:

The desire to create things does not typically prepare an engineer for the business of managing an engineering team. Rather than dealing only with things that obey the laws of mathematics and of physics, the engineer suddenly confronts the business of managing people and a budget, while at the same time retaining and applying all of his or her hard-won technical knowledge, and maintaining a mastery of the Essence of Engineering. This challenge is of the broadest kind. Part II serves to guide those facing this challenge, and will hopefully show all members of an engineering team what the engineering manager is working to achieve.

Managing an engineering design team can definitely be described as a multidisciplinary challenge. An Engineering Manager has to work at three different levels, simultaneously:

Having an understanding of the technologies involved with the products being designed,
Having a good grasp of the Essence of Engineering as presented in Part I of this seminar, and
Having a good grasp of the nine principles of Engineering Management, as presented in Part II of this seminar.

Here, in summary form, are the nine main aspects which together make up the Essence of Managing Engineering:

Nurture

Communication

Objectivity

Time

Budget

Cost

Focus

The Unproven

Expansion

Part III:

Thoroughness and discipline are essential aspects of the engineering process. Experience has shown that following a predefined checklist of steps is absolutely necessary to ensure that everything gets done, and in the right sequence. Part III of this seminar discusses engineering check lists, and gives some examples.