An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

The act of writing a strategy leads folks through a systematic analysis, so, even if we don’t share them, writing these documents helps us work through quite a few challenges, both overwhelming and mundane.

Tactically, ensure that the work your team is doing is valued: the quickest path out of innovation is to be viewed as a team that builds science projects,

Figure 3.8 The expected and actual experience of presenting to executives. My general approach to presenting to senior leaders is: Tie topic to business value. One or two sentences to answer the question “Why should anyone care?” Establish historical narrative. Two to four sentences to help folks understand how things are going, how we got here, an

Maintain a document with this information, which you keep updated and share with your manager. For some managers, this will be enough! Mission accomplished.

Write up a plan to close all of the easy gaps and one or two of the riskiest gaps. Add it to your personal goals, and then, congrats, you’ve completed a round of succession planning!

By tracking your eras and transitions, you can avoid lingering in any era beyond the point when you’re developing new masteries. This will allow you to continue your personal growth even if you’re working in what some would describe as a boring, mature company. The same advice applies if you’re within a quickly growing company or startup: don’t tre

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you only get value from projects when they finish: to make progress, above all else, you must ensure that some of your projects finish.

Good goals are a composition of four specific kinds of numbers: A target states where you want to reach. A baseline identifies where you are today. A trend describes the current velocity. A time frame sets bounds for the change.