Photo credit: Flickr/ Matthew Fang

In the world of engineering, most of us work in a “project environment”. That is to say, most of our work consists of a series of distinct, unique endeavours to accomplish some specific goal. That could be to design a new product or service, for example. This might not seem like much of a major observation, but it has important consequences.

You see, there’s a distinct science to how projects are run and managed. In fact, there’s a whole profession dedicated to project management (see PMI.org). These folks exist because you can’t manage projects the same way you manage functional teams. Projects tend to fail when you don’t apply specific project management skills and techniques.

Knowing that projects are kind of special and require a particular approach can actually help you as an engineer make better decisions in your technical work. My goal today is to help you understand the critical elements in any project (especially the one that most project managers lose sight of) and how they can help you do awesome engineering work.

The 4 (+1) Important Elements of a Project

There are 4 (+1) important elements to any project. They are:

• The project goal
• Schedule
• Budget
• Scope
• Customer expectations

The project goal

This is the single most important element of a project. Everyone on a project team needs to understand the point of the project they’re engaged in. Why are you doing what you’re doing? It might seem obvious to some, but this is often overlooked. Understanding why you are doing something can help influence how you do it. For example, if you’re designing a bridge, you could be trying to help solve a city’s traffic problems, or you could be solving traffic problems AND showcasing the city’s commitment to sustainable construction practices. It’s important to know which so that your designs help meet the actual end goals.

Schedule and Budget

You need to know how long you have to accomplish your task, and how many hours of work you’re to do it in. Knowing this helps an engineer understand the level of effort that should go into a task, and how urgent a task is. Most engineers (myself included) fall into what I call the “perfection trap”. The trap is this: a task or design is never “done”, because you can always see ways of improving it. This is a problem. This perfectionism gets in the way of actually getting things done. Your budget is a signal that a given task merits a certain amount of effort. You should strive to do great work with that budget, but not let perfection get in the way of actually finishing it.

Scope

Scope is the set of things that you actually have to do in a project. Think of it as the project’s to do list. This can also be applied to the product or service you’re trying to develop. This is important for engineers for the same reason budget is – it’s very, very tempting to do more than what we’re asked to do. Again, this is because we see ways of making a product even better than what the customer asked for. That’s not a terrible thing, but it can get out of hand. You have to make sure you aren’t spending time of stuff the client isn’t actually paying for to the exclusion of what they are paying for. You always need to focus your time and attention on “in-scope” work first, and then look at extras after if there’s time (and there almost never is).

Customer Expectations

There’s some debate in the world of project management on this one. That’s why I label this as the “+1” important element of a project. While some disagree, many people argue, myself included, that customer expectations need to be tracked and treated as importantly as budget, scope, schedule, and goal. That’ because it’s impossible to truly capture everything the client wants in the project documentation. Never in the history of engineering has a client captured %100 what they wanted in the project specifications. That’s not entirely their fault. It’s very difficult to describe complex systems, and it’s hard to know what you want until you see the product develop. Engaging clients and making an effort to know what they really want is key to having them accept your work in the end. Remember that a spec compliant design isn’t necessarily the same as a design that the customer actually wants.

Your Experiences

Do you work in a project environment? Tell us about your experiences in the comments section below. Also, if you liked this article and want more like it, please sign up for my email list below!