Engineering and Mangement Are Different — When Will We Learn?
May 2nd, 2004 by HalReport exposes failure of IT project management:
"Fewer than one in five of all IT projects in the UK can be considered truly successful, and failed projects lead to billions of pounds being wasted on IT systems, according to research from the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society. The report, released last week, said the UK is failing to produce software engineers and managers with the project management skills to execute complex projects."
The authors of the report call for the IT community to "…embrace the discipline and professionalism associated with traditional branches of engineering…" to deliver projects that are a success.
"Projects are often poorly defined, codes of practice are frequently ignored, and there is a woeful inability to learn from past experience," he added.
We don't need better engineering. We need people who take care of their project team while addressing the day-to-day responsibilities of coordinating action among them.
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May 5th, 2004 at 2:43 pm
To clarify my point — while agreeing that the two are different — we need both improved engineeering and improved management - at the very least.
May 5th, 2004 at 4:49 pm
Hi Frank,
I can see how you can think I sing just one note. I don’t argue with your claim that we need better engineering (in some cases). I claim that too many projects have good engineering at the pieces level without the attention to optimization at the whole.
There are five notes in my song: collaboration, optimization of the whole, increased relatedness of project performers, projects as networks of commitment, and tight coupling of learning with action. You can make one heck of a melody with just five notes.
May 7th, 2004 at 1:50 pm
Project management is ALL about managing the customer.
Project management is ALL about managing the team.
Project management is HARD.
When there is political in-fighting on the customer side, is it any wonder that engineering can’t solve those problems ? When you CAN’T build the right system, does it really matter if you build the system right ?
May 7th, 2004 at 2:24 pm
Fitness for purpose is a good engineering principal. If you simply build something well that no one needs you have not engineered the desired/reuired solution.