9781119525769 | Engineering Project Management

TERM	PRICE	DUE
SEMESTER	$143.86	Dec 11

A hands-on guide for creating a winning engineering project

Engineering Project Management is a practical, step-by-step guide to project management for engineers. The author – a successful, long-time practicing engineering project manager – describes the techniques and strategies for creating a successful engineering project. The book introduces engineering projects and their management, and then proceeds stage-by-stage through the engineering life-cycle project, from requirements, implementation, to phase-out. The book offers information for understanding the needs of the end user of a product and other stakeholders associated with a project, and is full of techniques based on real, hands-on management of engineering projects.

The book starts by explaining how we perform the actual engineering on projects; the techniques for project management contained in the rest of the book use those engineering methods to create superior management techniques. Every topic – from developing a work-breakdown structure and an effective project plan, to creating credible predictions for schedules and costs, through monitoring the progress of your engineering project – is infused with actual engineering techniques, thereby vastly increasing the effectivity and credibility of those management techniques.

The book also teaches you how to draw the right conclusions from numeric data and calculations, avoiding the mistakes that often cause managers to make incorrect decisions. The book also provides valuable insight about what the author calls the social aspects of engineering project management: aligning and motivating people, interacting successfully with your stakeholders, and many other important people-oriented topics. The book ends with a section on ethics in engineering.

This important book:

Offers a hands-on guide for developing and implementing a project management plan
Includes background information, strategies, and techniques on project management designed for engineers
Takes an easy-to-understand, step-by-step approach to project management
Contains ideas for launching a project, managing large amount of software, and tips for ending a project

Structured to support both undergraduate and graduate courses in engineering project management, Engineering Project Management is an essential guide for managing a successful project from the idea phase to the completion of the project.

NEIL G. SIEGEL, PHD, spent many years successfully managing engineering projects, big and small. After retiring as a vice-president of the Northrop Grumman Corporation, he is at present the IBM Professor of Engineering Management at the University of Southern California,. More information is available at??neilsiegel.usc.edu.

About the Author xv

Acknowledgments xvii

About the Companion Website xix

Introduction xxi

1 The Role and the Challenge 1

1.1 Introduction 1

1.1.1 Why Do We Care About Engineering Project Management? 2

1.1.2 The Opportunity For You 5

1.2 The Project 5

1.2.1 Where Do Projects Come From? 8

1.2.2 Customers 8

1.2.3 Attributes of Projects 8

1.2.4 The Project Life‐Cycle 9

1.2.5 Goals of the Project/Factors in Tension With Each Other 9

1.3 The Project Manager 12

1.3.1 The Role 12

1.3.2 You as the Manager of an Engineering Project 15

1.4 Engineering Processes Can Help You 18

1.5 The Engineering Project Manager Mind‐Set 20

1.6 Next 22

1.7 About Facilitated Lab Sessions and Practical Exercises 22

1.8 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 23

1.8.1 Exemplars 23

1.8.2 Points for Discussion 25

2 Performing Engineering on Projects (Part I) 29

2.1 The Systems Method 29

2.1.1 Motivation and Description 29

2.1.2 Life‐Cycle Shapes 37

2.1.3 Progress Through the Stages 43

2.2 Requirements 47

2.3 Design 55

2.3.1 The Design and its Process 55

2.3.2 The Design Hierarchy is Not the Same as the Requirements Hierarchy 64

2.3.3 Modeling 64

2.3.4 Design Patterns 66

2.3.5 Do the Hard Parts First 67

2.3.6 Designs and Your Team 68

2.3.7 Summary: Design 69

2.4 Interaction of the Requirements and Design Processes with Project Management Processes 69

2.5 Your Role in All of This 72

2.6 Next 75

2.7 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 75

3 Performing Engineering on Projects (Part II) 77

3.1 The Remaining Stages of the Project Life‐Cycle 77

3.1.1 Implementation 77

3.1.2 Integration 77

3.1.3 Testing – Verification and Validation 81

3.1.4 Testing – Planning, Procedures, Test Levels, Other Hints About Testing 85

3.1.4.1 Unscripted Use of the System 88

3.1.4.2 Realistic Operating Conditions 88

3.1.4.3 Off‐Nominal Operating Conditions 89

3.1.5 Production 90

3.1.6 Deployment: Use in Actual Mission Operations 92

3.1.7 Non‐project Life‐Cycle Stages 93

3.1.7.1 Logistics 93

3.1.7.2 Phase‐Out and Disposal 97

3.1.7.3 Summary for the Post‐Deployment Stages 98

3.2 Next 98

3.3 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 98

4 Understanding Your Users and Your Other Stakeholders 99

4.1 The Four Steps to Understanding Your Users and Your Other Stakeholders 99

4.2 Case Study About the Value of Using the Customer’s Coordinate System of Value: Role‐Based Processing 110

4.3 Special Topic: Designing the User Experience 113

4.4 Summary: Understanding Your Users and Your Other Stakeholders 118

4.5 Next 119

4.6 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 119

5 How Do Engineering Projects Get Created? 121

5.1 Engineering Projects are Created in Response to a Need, or a Vision 121

5.2 How to Win 124

5.2.1 Approach #1: The Heilmeier Questions 130

5.2.2 Approach #2: Neil’s Approach: Achieve Positive Competitive Differentiation 131

5.3 Your Role in All of This 143

5.4 Summary: How to Win 144

5.5 Next 144

5.6 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 144

6 Organizing and Planning 147

6.1 The Work‐Breakdown Structure 147

6.2 The Statement of Work 154

6.3 The Organization Chart 157

6.4 The Project Plan 162

6.5 Your Role in All of This 167

6.6 Summary: Organizing and Planning 168

6.7 Next 168

6.8 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 168

7 Creating Credible Predictions for Schedule and Cost: the Activity Network 171

7.1 Setting the Stage 171

7.2 Estimating the Schedule For Your Project 174

7.2.1 Step 1: Define the Tasks 174

7.2.2 Step 2: Identify the Interdependencies Between Tasks 175

7.2.3 Step 3: Estimate, in a Statistical Fashion, the Duration of Each Task 177

7.2.4 Step 4: Fixed Dates vs. Derived Dates 179

7.2.5 Examples 180

7.3 Estimating the Cost of Your Project 181

7.4 Injecting Realism Into Your Estimates 183

7.4.1 The S‐Curve 183

7.4.2 Another Aspect of Realism in Schedules: Margin and Slack 184

7.4.3 Calibrate Against Top‐Down Estimation Methods 185

7.4.4 Resource Leveling 187

7.5 Cost vs. Price 188

7.6 Your Role in All of This 189

7.7 The Intersection With Engineering 190

7.8 Next 191

7.9 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 191

8 Drawing Valid Conclusions From Numbers 193

8.1 In Engineering, We Must Make Measurements 193

8.2 The Data and/or the Conclusions are Often Wrong 194

8.2.1 The Fallacy of the Silent Evidence 199

8.2.2 Logical Flaws in the Organization of System Testing 201

8.2.3 The Problem of Scale 205

8.2.4 Signal and Noise 207

8.2.5 A Special Type of Measurement: The Test 210

8.2.6 The Decision Tree: A Method That Properly Accounts For Conditional Probabilities 211

8.3 What Engineering Project Managers Need to Measure 214

8.4 Implications for the Design and Management Processes 215

8.4.1 We Need Measurements in Order to Create Good Designs 215

8.4.2 Projects Provide an Opportunity for Time Series 215

8.4.3 Interpreting the Data 215

8.4.4 How Projects Fail 216

8.4.5 Avoid “Explaining Away” the Data 217

8.4.6 Keep a Tally of Predictions 217

8.4.7 Social Aspects of Measurement 218

8.4.8 Non‐linear Effects 219

8.4.9 Sensitivity Analysis 221

8.4.10 Keep it Simple 221

8.4.11 Modeling 222

8.4.12 Ground Your Estimates and Predictions in the Past 222

8.5 Your Role in All of This 223

8.6 Summary: Drawing Valid Conclusions From Numbers 224

8.7 Next 224

8.8 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 224

9 Risk and Opportunity Management 225

9.1 Things Can Go Wrong With Our Project: How Do We Cope? 225

9.2 The Steps of Risk Management 229

9.2.1 Step a: Identify the Potential Risks and Opportunities 229

9.2.2 Step b: Identify the Symptoms 231

9.2.3 Step c: Select the Item to be Measured, and the Measurement Methods 232

9.2.4 Step d: Score Each Risk for Both Likelihood and Impact 232

9.2.5 Step e: Create Mitigation and Exploitation Plans 235

9.2.6 Step f: Create Triggers and Timing Requirements for Those Mitigation Plans 237

9.2.7 Step g: Create a Method to Aggregate All Risk Assessments Into a Periodic Overall Project Impact Prediction 238

9.2.8 Step h: Create and Use Some Sort of Periodic “Management Rhythm,” Wherein You Periodically Make Decisions About Risk Mitigation and Opportunity Exploitation Actions, Based on the Periodic Assessment 239

9.2.9 Step i: When Risks Actually Occur (Transition from Risks to Issues), Perform a Root‐Cause Analysis 240

9.3 Two Special Types of Risks 241

9.3.1 The Low‐Likelihood, High‐Impact Event 241

9.3.2 The Risks That We Have Not Yet Identified 243

9.4 Lessons Learned From Risk Management 245

9.5 Your Role in All of This 246

9.6 Summary: Risk and Opportunity Management 246

9.7 Next 246

9.8 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 246

10 Monitoring the Progress of Your Project (Part I) 249

10.1 Monitoring Progress Via Updated Predictions to Schedule and Cost 249

10.2 Making the Updated Predictions 251

10.2.1 Creating the Updated Prediction for the Schedule 252

10.2.2 Preview: Variance Analysis 255

10.2.3 Creating the Updated Prediction for the Cost 255

10.2.4 Taking Earned Value 255

10.2.5 The Rolling Wave 257

10.3 Using the Updated Predictions 258

10.3.1 Calculating the Schedule and Cost Variances 258

10.3.2 Time Variance 262

10.3.3 Variance Analysis 263

10.4 Financial Measures About Which Your Company Will Care 263

10.4.1 Sales 264

10.4.2 Profit 264

10.4.3 Cash Flow 265

10.4.4 Day‐Sales Receivables 265

10.5 Your Role in All of This 265

10.6 Summary: Monitoring the Progress of your Project (Part I) 266

10.7 Next 267

10.8 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 267

11 Monitoring the Progress of Your Project (Part II) 269

11.1 How the Manager of an Engineering Project Ought to Allocate His/Her Time 269

11.2 A Big Claim on Our Time: The Periodic Management Rhythm 270

11.2.1 Sequence and Interaction of Steps 274

11.3 The Steps of the Periodic Management Rhythm 274

11.3.1 Updating the Predictions of Operational and Technical Performance 274

11.3.2 Updating the Predictions for the Schedule 276

11.3.3 Updating the Predictions for the Cost 278

11.3.4 Updating the Risk Assessment and Initiating Risk Mitigation 278

11.3.5 The Monthly Calendar 279

11.3.6 The Accounting Calendar 280

11.3.7 Management Reserve Funding 280

11.4 The Social Benefits of the Periodic Management Rhythm 282

11.5 Your Role in All of This 283

11.6 Summary: Monitoring the Progress of Your Project (Part II) 284

11.7 Next 284

11.8 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 284

12 Four Special Topics 285

12.1 Launching Your Project 285

12.1.1 The Project Start‐Up Process 285

12.1.2 The Earned‐Value Baseline: A Special Project Start‐Up Task 291

12.1.3 Preparing to Operate at a Large Scale 292

12.1.4 Summary for Starting a Project 293

12.2 Systems and Projects With Large Amounts of Software 294

12.2.1 The Benefits 294

12.2.2 The Problems 294

12.2.2.1 Scale 295

12.2.3 Lessons Learned for the Project Manager About Software 296

12.3 The Agile Software Development Methodology 299

12.4 Ending Your Project 302

12.5 Your Role in All of This 303

12.6 Next 305

12.7 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 305

13 The Social Aspects of Engineering Project Management 307

13.1 Dealing With People, Becoming a Leader 308

13.2 Alignment 308

13.3 The Sine Qua Non of Leadership 311

13.4 Motivating Your Team 312

13.5 Recognizing and Resolving Conflict 316

13.6 Siegel’s Mechanics of Project Management 323

13.7 Dealing With Special People 325

13.7.1 Your Management 325

13.7.2 Your Customers 327

13.7.3 The Human Resources Department – An Important Partner 327

13.8 Your Career as an Engineer 329

13.9 Change on Your Project 333

13.10 Coping With Career Change 334

13.10.1 Foundational Knowledge 335

13.10.2 Lifelong Learning 335

13.10.3 On‐the‐Job Learning 335

13.10.4 Know and Grow 336

13.10.5 Summary: How to Cope With Career Change 337

13.10.6 Examples of Mid‐career Changes I Have Known 337

13.11 Getting Ahead 338

13.11.1 Preparing Yourself for Leadership 338

13.11.2 Getting Ahead: Understanding Your Boss 338

13.11.3 Enablers 341

13.11.4 Leadership vs. Management 341

13.11.5 Disablers and Pitfalls: How to Fail at Getting Ahead 341

13.11.6 Summary: Getting Ahead 342

13.12 Two Special Topics 343

13.12.1 Special Topic 1: Projects Whose Work is Geographically Distributed Across More Than One Work Site 343

13.12.2 Special Topic 2: Projects That Include Teams Located in Multiple Countries 344

13.13 Summary: Social Aspects of Engineering Project Management 345

13.14 Next 346

13.15 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 346

14 Achieving Quality 347

14.1 Defining the Term Quality 347

14.2 One Motivation for Quality: A Good Reputation 347

14.2.1 Quality Control and Audits 348

14.3 Quality Initiatives 348

14.3.1 6‐Sigma 349

14.3.1.1 Defect Rates 352

14.3.1.2 Justified Variation 354

14.3.1.3 Defects in Assembly 354

14.3.2 ISO‐9000 355

14.3.3 Capability Maturity Model 355

14.4 Processes for Engineering and for Project Management 356

14.5 Procurement and Subcontracting 357

14.5.1 Vendor Partnerships 358

14.6 The Effects of Quality 359

14.7 The Bill of Materials 360

14.8 Your Role in All of This 360

14.9 Next 361

14.10 This Week’s Facilitated Lab Session 361

14.A Appendix: What Distributions Actually Look Like in the Real World of Engineering Projects 361

15 Applying Our Ideas in the Real World, Ethics in Engineering 365

15.1 Applying Our Ideas in the Real World 365

15.2 Ethics in Engineering 367

15.2.1 When Does Bad Engineering Become Bad Ethics? 368

15.2.1.1 How Do Engineers Get Into Situations of Ethical Lapse? 368

15.2.1.2 Characteristics of Modern Engineered Systems that Create the Risk of Ethical Lapse 369

15.2.1.3 Complexity and Scale Introduce Non‐linearities 369

15.2.1.4 Reliability and Availability are Under‐emphasized 370

15.2.1.5 Treating Operator‐Induced Failures as Being Outside Our Design Responsibilities 370

15.2.1.6 Ignoring the Potential That Our Systems Will Be Used in Ways Other Than We Intended 371

15.2.2 Corrective Actions 372

15.2.3 Conclusions About Ethics in Engineering 374

15.3 Thank You 375

Index 377

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Engineering Project Management

Engineering Project Management

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

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