ASEM Blog

Summer is here and with it comes opportunities to relax and renew through vacations with family and friends. I hope that all are able to schedule some downtime or dive into favorite past-times and projects. Those of us in leadership at ASEM are doing likewise, but we’re also starting to feel the energy around the upcoming conference. Award nominations are pouring in, reviews are due for conference paper submissions, and the Board of Directors is starting to think about progress on current goals, as well as goals for the upcoming year. We also have an election just around the corner! It’s an exciting time to be part of ASEM and we continue to say firmly that we are glad you’re a member! If you have ideas or are looking to get involved, please reach out! We can’t wait to see you in October, but don’t be a stranger in the meantime.

Best to all for your various summer plans!

Suzie

by Don Kennedy, PhD, PMP, FASEM

The Bhagavad Gita (or the "Song of God") is an ancient Hindu text that I do not claim to be an expert in. That said, it is my understanding that one of the lessons in the work is that "action is greater than inaction." I would like to use that concept to highlight some less than optimal behaviors I have seen in managers at all levels.

First however, an example from school. I knew a person, I will call Dave, that had a major project due. The policy for the assignment was a 10% deduction from the mark for each day late. On the due date, Dave decided that he was not happy with the work and he did not want the professor to think that was his best work. He decided that it was better to lose 10% and take an extra day to polish it up.  It might actually get 10% more and make up for the deduction for being late. You can see where this is going until enough days passed that Dave decided that it was better to not hand in anything than to explain why he was handing in something so late that it could potentially be worth no marks anyway. At that point, I did ask Dave what he thought was better than handing in nothing? Handing in “anything!”

I have an old Project Management textbook that says the most important trait of a good project manager is the desire to complete tasks.  I searched for such an expression in recent works and did not find that same clarity.

Too many times I have seen managers paralyzed by the fear of making a decision that is not the best one. One startup company I was involved in went bankrupt even though the product sure seemed to be a winner but after expending a lot of resources to reach a certain point, the senior executives debated how to roll it out. They had a working concept but then 5 years passed without turning it into a commercially viable operation. Some of the executives said they only had one shot at doing it, so they had to make sure it was right. A fear of competition resulted in a lot of legal fees on patent protection and corporate structuring to mitigate the impact of claims resulting from some perceived risk events. Pushing the product out the door fast and making the competition play catch up had risks but the chance of success was greater than not ever producing anything. Some related side businesses of the proposed plan produced commodities that were at a peak in their demand and price cycle. In the years that nothing was accomplished the price of these products were near the cost of production and the venture lost much of its appeal during this time of lost opportunity. The company is currently only a shell trying to raise new capital to try again.

In many supply-chain situations, extra lead time in ordering can create significant savings. To delay procurement due to a sense of insecurity in making a decision can change the plan to one of having to pay extra to expedite the purchase to meet the crashed schedule.

Often the rewards of action far outweigh the risks of inaction. I offer this as something for you to consider.  

About the Author

Dr. Don Kennedy has been a regular attendee of the ASEM conference since 1999, with particularly good participation at the informal late evening "discussions" (sometimes making it difficult to get to the morning plenaries). He has spent much of his time working on large construction projects in remote areas, lecturing at a few universities, and recently had a go as Director of Engineering in R&D. More to come at the IAC Conference. Don Kennedy is the President of The International Engineers Conference on Ethics and a Fellow of ASEM.

by Alexis Devenin, MBA, PMP

A program is understood as a group of related projects with common strategic objectives that must be managed in a coordinated way.  A project portfolio is defined as a group of high-level projects and programs with the focus of sustaining the strategy of a company. It is understood that the stakeholder of a project portfolio is the top management of the company.

There is a great number of project managers that must lead a group of projects from different stakeholders of their organizations. They have to manage a “portfolio,” not of high-level projects, but rather to address organizational requirements arising from different stakeholders and to cover different kinds of problems or opportunities. For instance, in an industrial plant, these projects can consist of replacement of old equipment, automation, safety improvement, machine monitoring, equipment modification to meet environmental standards, or to eliminate repetitive failures, energy efficiency improvements, etc. These multiple projects may not have been originated from top management or inspired by the company strategy or vision, but they have appeared by “spontaneous generation” at different levels and in different production units. As a group, they can be called “multi-project” instead of referred to as a “project portfolio” because they are not necessarily related to strategy, but instead, they correspond to local and punctual requirements.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has dedicated standards and a certification for program management and for portfolio management. “Multi-project management” has not reached the same status as their fancy relatives “program management” or “portfolio management,” but multi-project management is the scenario in which a lot of project managers have to work.

Typically, the projects come from different production lines of the plant, or from different plants of the company, or from different units of the organization. In the same way that similar organisms have similar needs, similar units usually have similar requirements. It is convenient to identify a group of projects with similar contents or objectives and manage them as a project program.

Identifying similar projects and treating them as a program has several advantages. You can develop a pilot solution in one of the plants and then fine tune the solution for the next one. Once you arrive at a satisfactory solution, you can standardize the solution for the group of plants. Finally, grouping projects puts you in a good position to negotiate with contractors for better conditions. 

Programs not only can arise from high-level management, but they can emerge naturally from requirements at the operational level.

About the Author

Alexis Devenin is a Mechanical Engineer with his MBA and PMP certification. He is an Engineering Project Manager with 20 years of experience in the Steel, Mining and Renewable Energy industries. Connect with him at: www.linkedin.com/in/alexisdevenin

Build an A Team by Whitney Johnson.  Harvard Business Review Press:  Boston, MA (2018).  194 pages.  US$28.00 (hard cover). 

Whether you are designated supervisor or manager, most engineers find themselves in a position of leadership.  We lead project teams to accomplish specific goals, and we lead R&D teams to explore new scientific frontiers.  Moreover, we are all part of teams striving to grow and sustain the organizations where we work.

Whitney Johnson’s recent book, “Build an A Team,” is a short text that teaches us about assembling the right mixture of knowledge and expertise on a team.  She also informs us how to better lead and motivate team members with wide variations in skills and experience.

Learning S-Curves

S-curves are common throughout the technological and business worlds.  At an early time, the curve has a low value but as time goes on, the slope increases steeply.  And near the end of the time period, the curve will again level out.  Sales of new products and technical advances in science follow S-curves.  And as Johnson illustrates in “Build an A Team,” learning also follows an S-curve.  At the beginning of a job assignment, we are often inexperienced.  But, as we become familiar with the organization and performance expectations, our learning engagement rises steeply.  Then, as we gain mastery and experience in conducting the job’s required tasks and activities, our learning levels out to a slow pace.

Because you wouldn’t want to have a team completely composed of novices or of experts, the author recommends an ideal team composition based on the learning S-curve.  She advises that effective teams have about 15% at the low-end, 15% at the high-end, and the remaining 70% in the middle.  The team can be highly productive since newbies are typically at the low-end of the learning curve for about six months while engaged and growing team members (in the middle) need three to four years to build expertise.  People at the top of the curve should be coached and mentored into new positions where they can start a new learning curve to sustain engagement and motivation.

Accelerating Learning

While each person proceeds through an individual learning curve at his or her own pace, leaders can accelerate a team’s learning curve.  Johnson offers seven tips to help managers support team learning (Chapter 2).

1. Become a talent developer.
2. Pinpoint employees’ talents and utilize them.
3. Use time limits to motivate and hone focus.
4. Celebrate success and be generous in helping employees fulfill their potential.
5. Sacrifice short-term productivity to encourage curve-jumping.
6. Let employees take on uncomfortable challenges and support them through failures.
7. Shift players on your team as their skills and talents emerge.

Managing the Team

Recruiting and hiring (Chapter 3) should focus on motivation and purpose as much as acquiring given skills.  People can be taught functional skills but fit with purpose and goal-orientation are intrinsic characteristics.  I emphasize this point in the Virtual Team Model [1] as well.

New hires at the low-end of the learning curve need support to build their internal networks (Chapter 4).  Job rotations are often used in engineering and operations companies for mutual exposure among people and functions.  Make sure you set short-term, achievable performance goals for new hires too.

As team members build technical and leadership skills, give them assignments that continue to capitalize on their strengths (Chapter 5).  Push these mid-level learning employees to greater investment of effort or ask them to accelerate results.  These team members are confident in their abilities but often need a push to independently practice skills (pg. 113).

Finally, the experts who have repeatedly demonstrated mastery are at risk of becoming bored and leaving your organization.  You’ll need to motivate experts to become internal pacesetters and leaders, trainers, and/or mentors (Chapter 6).  These activities usually require new skills so the master is jumping to a new learning curve where s/he will again be motivated to learn and grow.

Conclusion

Less than a quarter of people feel like they have a clear career path (pg. 4).  Engineering managers are in a unique position to help team members and employees accelerate their own development.  Understanding the various stages of learning, as described by Whitney Johnson in “Build an A Team,” can help us to become better leaders.  Ultimately, our improved leadership as engineering managers leads to better performance for our teams and organizations.

How would you assess the learning levels of your current engineering team?

Works Cited

[1] T. Jurgens-Kowal and D. Hardenbrook, "Bridging Communication Gaps in Virtual Teams," in Leveraging Constraints for Innovation, PDMA New Product Development Essentials, Volume 3, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2018, pp. 95-117.

About the Author

Teresa Jurgens-Kowal, PE, CPEM, PMP®, NPDP, is a passionate lifelong learner. She enjoys helping individuals and companies improve their innovation programs and loves scrapbooking. You can learn more about Teresa and her new Innovation MasterMind group by connecting on LinkedIn.

by Teresa Jurgens-Kowal, PE, CPEM, PMP®, NPDP

Innovation is key to success in all businesses today.  Global competition is driving a faster pace of technology development, and consumers require updated and integrated access to products and services.  Yet, innovation often remains an elusive goal for many engineers. 

Engineering managers are on the frontline to encourage creativity and innovation.  While we must always place safety as a first priority, we can adopt testing, prototyping, and variation as tools to improve product and process performance.  Building effective, balanced innovation teams is the first step to long-term, sustainable success. 

Innovation Team Member Profiles

A team is generally composed of several engineers with different levels of experience and various skill sets.  Such diversity in education and knowledge can lead to more creative problem-solving, but only when the diversity does not lead to conflict.  Understanding the work styles of your team and how to mold the team for productivity is the responsibility of the innovative engineering manager. 

Creators

Creators are team members who love the hunt for new ideas.  They are eager to “bounce around ideas and concepts,” and they enjoy thinking in the abstract.  They love brainstorming sessions and are very arisk-tolerant.  If an experiment doesn't work out, then they are ready to move on to the next one.  Generating a lot of options and alternatives is very energizing to a creator. 

Executors

At the opposite end of the spectrum are executors.  These team members like stability and predictability.  Once the plan is written, an executor will follow the steps exactly.  Executors prefer concrete thinking to the abstract and will often jump immediately to solution-generation.  They are energized by systems and procedures, enjoying implementing projects with specific and detailed checklists, for example. 

Refiners

While creators and executors sit at opposite ends of the opportunity spectrum, refiners and advancers view communication and relationships as the primary lens for teamwork.  A refiner enjoys analysis and will mold and shape project data to draw objective conclusions.  Refiners may prefer to work alone and assume that all solutions must be based on logic.  Ideas that are impractical are not necessary to study from a refiner's perspective; but, if the existing data supports a solution to the problem, a refiner will design an accurate response. 

Advancers

Further, while the refiner believes the data speaks for itself, advancers relish building relationships to sell and promote an idea.  Emotional linkage to a product or process solution is engaging for an advancer to develop.  They act us “cheerleaders” for projects and can get others  excited about it.  Advancers are energized by interactions with potential customers and senior management because they are excited to promote answers to solve problems. 

Potential Team Conflicts

Engineering leaders need to manage personality conflicts yet can encourage diverse technical discussions to drive toward a better solution.  Creators may find frustration with the slow, methodical work of an executor.  An innovation team can thrive by letting creators have free reign at the beginning of a project but transferring standardized implementation to the executors later in the project life cycle. 

Likewise, refiners may be frustrated with the exuberance of an advancer, who in turn believes in the emotional value of a solution.  Advancers will find the pace of work of a refiner slow and may not understand their need for isolation.  Each team members’ preferred work style could lead to a conflict, but a successful innovation manager will instead use these differences to build strength on the team.

Using the Work Styles for Strength

Using your team’s work styles for strength can benefit an innovation project.  In addition to leaning on creators in the idea generation stage of a project, an engineering manager can use advancers to gauge qualitative feedback.  A refiner can work with executors on the team to design specific quantitative measures to validate the early concepts.  When trouble hits a project schedule or budget, as it inevitably does, the varied work styles of an innovation team will allow team members to collaborate, brainstorm, test, design, and evaluate novel solutions.  Your executors will ensure that the project gets completed according to these specifications.

Engineering managers must assess the various work styles of their innovation team members to build on their strengths.  Engaging in open communication regarding work style preferences and differences can lead to more productive and efficient team relationships.  And in turn, this leads to better and faster product and process development. 

How will you use different work styles on your team to create novel and innovative solutions?

About the Author

Teresa Jurgens-Kowal, PE, CPEM, PMP®, NPDP, is a passionate lifelong learner. She enjoys helping individuals and companies improve their innovation programs and loves scrapbooking. You can learn more about Teresa and her new Innovation MasterMind group by connecting on LinkedIn.

Happy Spring! Carpets of lush green and beautiful flowers abound and it is a time of exciting promise for many as they consider new challenges and opportunities! ASEM is no different and we also rejoice in the accomplishments of our members, plus the chance to take our next steps as engineering management professionals. I’m delighted to share details on the 2019 IAC in this newsletter, along with opportunities to celebrate each other through society awards. Please consider nominating a worthy colleague or program for one of the awards listed below. Also, we have very exciting news about the trademark application for our CAEM/CPEM professional certification. We are in the home stretch and so excited! It has been a journey supported by many and we are so grateful to all for their hard work. Engineering Management is a vibrant, ever evolving field and it is a great time to be part of the exciting promise that ASEM brings to its members.

In friendship,

Suzie

The ASEM Board of Directors just held its Spring meeting at the 2019 IAC venue and we are all in for a treat at the next conference! This conference space will be very different from the 2018 meeting in Idaho, but every bit as vibrant in its own way. The conference will be housed in a bustling neighborhood with many excellent dining choices nearby. Some of the most historic sites of the early history of the US are housed just a short distance away. It will be another world-class meeting.

Beginning in the April eNews, we plan to invite multiple guest columnists to help get the buzz going around the conference and the local industry. We hope you’ll enjoy this change of pace!

Best, Suzie

Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash

In this final installment on the Engineering Management Body of Knowledge (EMBoK) blog series, we take a look at professional codes of conduct and ethics. I share an overview of what ethics is, some of the important concepts surrounding ethics, and why ethics is so important to our work as engineers and managers.

What is Ethics?

Ethics relates to the set of values and morals that are accepted as good and desirable by society or an individual. When a person’s behavior or character is deemed good or virtuous, regardless of the pressures put on them to act otherwise, they are regarded as ethical.

Stakeholders and Ethics

Stakeholders are the groups and individuals who may be affected by, directly or indirectly, what an engineering manager or organization does and the decisions they make. A typical organization may have stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, and communities as their stakeholders. Ethical decision-making on the part of engineering managers requires consideration of how decisions will affect all relevant stakeholders. 

Ethical Theories

Ethical theories are useful because they provide a framework for use in decision-making. There are two broad groups of ethical theories considered in the EMBoK: conduct theories and character theories.

Conduct theories are concerned with the actions a person takes and what the underlying motivation is for taking them. These theories range from the altruistic to the self-centered. On one end, a person’s ethics lead them to act in ways that benefit others. On the other end of the spectrum, a person’s ethics can lead them to “look out for number one” and make decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of others.

Character theories, on the other hand, are concerned with a person’s character and virtues. These theories do not suggest explicit ways of acting; rather, they suggest ways of being such that ethical behavior will naturally result. Virtues like courage, honestly, and justice are promoted in these theories.

Ethical Decision-Making

There is no one process or flow chart to guide an engineering manager towards making ethical decisions. However, there are practical tools and models that can be used to help. For example, the utilitarian model mentioned above could be used to help a manager determine which decision could be made that would result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

With each model, however, there are pitfalls that need to be understood and mitigated. In the utilitarian model, it can be difficult to measure benefits and harms for each stakeholder group, and to rank the order the importance of those groups.

The EMBoK also offers a series of practical questions that engineering managers can ask themselves when faced with ethical decisions. Questions like “What would my mother think of my decision?” are simple, but can be very useful in cutting through the complexity of a given situation and get to the heart of whether a given decision is ethical.

Professional Codes of Conduct

Our profession demands ethical behavior from its members, especially those in management and leadership roles. As a result of recent major scandals in the corporate world, such as the Enron scandal, many have lost faith in the business community. Furthermore, the nature of our work as engineers is such that the public’s well-being is often implicated in the decisions we make. Therefore, maintaining a high ethical standard for ourselves is of critical importance.

One challenge in behaving ethically in any given organization is lack of clarity on what constitutes ethical behavior. To address this, high-performing organizations develop clear, robust codes of conduct and train their staff to understand and apply those codes. Additionally, professional associations like the National Society of Professional Engineers create and promote codes of ethics that have broad applicability in many different industries and situations. Engineering managers and leaders can rely on these codes to help guide them in managing the difficult situations they face in the workplace.

Conclusion

Ethics and ethical decision-making are likely not at the forefront of most engineering managers’ minds in the course of a week. However, it is all but certain that, at some point in your career, you will be faced with an ethical dilemma. Being able to recognize a situation as such, and understanding the tools you have at your disposal for managing that dilemma can go a very long way toward resolving your challenge in an ethical way.

About Patrick Sweet

Patrick Sweet, P.Eng., MBA, ASEP is a recognized expert in engineering management and leadership. His mission is to create a better world through high-performing engineering organizations. You can read more from Pat at the Engineering & Leadership blog.

This has been a busy month for the society. Our new projects are starting up, new board members are getting up to speed, and plans for the spring board meeting are moving forward.

The Board of Directors meets face to face twice a year, in March and prior to the International Annual Conference in the fall. The primary focus of our March meeting in Philadelphia involves linking society performance metrics with our director activities and projects so we continually improve our service to the global engineering management community. We plan to include updates on society metrics and various projects in future eNews editions.

In the last few months, a growing area involves our international presence. Currently there are graduate program certification visits being planned and conducted, ideas being developed to grow international chapters, agreements being finalized with the Canadian Society of Professional Engineers, and work on a proposal to grow international presence at the International Annual Conference. Speaking of which, please make your plans for Philadelphia, an excellent venue. Details on the abstract submission deadline are below.

by Alexis Devenin, MBA, PMP

One of the most typical problems in projects is scope creep, or the appearance of new requirements during project execution. The consequence of the appearance of new requirements is an increase in costs and time to complete the project.

One of the principal reasons to have unexpected requirements is an incomplete identification of project stakeholders. In fact, if you are unable to identify stakeholders, how you can understand and identify their needs, requirements, and constraints?

To identify stakeholders requires a 10,000 feet panoramic view. Because of your role and career path in the organization, and because of your academic background, personal skills, and character, you have a personal vision of the project goals, priorities, and scope. And that's okay! The company put you in a project management role because of your personal skills and vision. Nevertheless, if you don't have the ability of active listening and observing, you will advance in your particular interpretation of the project. Along the way, you will be surprised by unexpected stakeholders with complex and unexpected requirements.

Source: https://www.ghd.com/en-us/services/plant-engineering.aspx

In my particular area of practice, plant engineering project management, I have to link engineering phases to different stakeholders. Engineering projects usually have at least three different distinct phases: conceptual engineering, basic engineering, and detail engineering. Once these three phases of engineering are completed, construction begins. Each of these phases is dominated or influenced by different stakeholders.

In general, the project initiation is related to a business opportunity. The product definition, the production capacity, the location, and the plant performance are defined in this conceptual engineering stage. An outline or sketch up of the plant is defined, and the project at this stage is seen through business and strategic lenses. Clearly, in this phase, the highest influencer stakeholder is top management of the organization.

Once the conceptual phase is defined and concluded, the basic engineering phase is developed. At this stage, we have to put boots on the ground with engineering design. Process and instruments (P&I), layout diagrams, energy, raw material flow and principal equipment must be defined. Logistics and product storage shall be specified. A more precise investment estimation must be developed. At this stage, operations managers and production engineers are the most interested stakeholders and the ones that have to contribute the most to the engineering definitions.

Finally, detail engineering completely defines the equipment specifications and layout in sufficient detail that the constructor can execute the project. At this stage, is very important to check with operators and maintainers. These stakeholders have a practical “field” interest. To include these stakeholders in design review can avoid a lot of problems in operations and can improve the reliability and maintainability of the new production line.

Source: https://www.steengipharm.com/servicios-proyectos-de-ingenieria

The following table summarizes the engineering phases and the most important stakeholders in each stage:

Engineering Phase	Fundamental Stakeholder	Definitions / Regard
Conceptual Engineering	Top management	Business-Strategic
Basic Engineering	Operations manager  Production engineers	Mass & energy flow  Technical standards  Logistics
Detail Engineering	Operators   Maintainers	Functionality-Safety-  Maintainability-Reliability

In each engineering phase, it is important to check the design with the interested stakeholders. The division is not rigid or immovable, if not rather diffuse and iterative. Important changes in design have to be checked with all stakeholders. Implementing this process as a practice will help to achieve better results and minimize unexpected requirements during the execution phase.

About the Author

Alexis Devenin is a Mechanical Engineer with his MBA and PMP certification. He is an Engineering Project Manager with 20 years of experience in the Steel, Mining and Renewable Energy industries. Connect with him on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/alexisdevenin