Engineering Management in Electrical Engineering
How is Engineering Management related to electrical engineering?
Electrical engineering deals with wide variety of projects, may it be in Telecommunications, Control Engineering, or in Power engineering that includes the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity, and many more. And as everything that has been mentioned, it is clear that electrical engineering deals with projects in fields of science and technology. That is how it is related to Engineering Management, due to the very concise reason that electrical engineering projects will fail and will never succeed without Engineering Management.
What are the good qualities of an engineer manager?
A good engineer manager possess HIGH TECHNICAL ABILITY in the field, this ability is the basis of competence for an engineer manager in order to handle the work he/she is managing very effectively. Second thing that a good engineer manager must possess is the COMMUNICATION ABILITY, in this ability, he/she will be able to relay his/her competence to everyone around and can surely lead the team well using his/her effective ability to set direction and communication to his//her subordinates. Last thing is HIGH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, in the reality of the field of engineering, situations can sometimes be cold to the engineer manager. That is why it is important to have a high emotional intelligence so that he/she can manage and lead well without being bothered by personal emotions at work.
Why do projects fail?
A project failure is a product of poor engineering management. What I mean of a poor engineering management is that it can be lack of effort, lack of attention, lack of allocated resources, unrealistic budget and etc., but no matter how minor a failure is, it is still an outcome of a poor engineering management. As an example, if the management or the engineer manager fails to do his job as the highest person of the chain in command at work, the project will definitely fail. It can be lack of technical ability of the engineer manager, because, if it is the thing, he will not be able to foresee or make trade-offs on the project when a need to do so, arises. Additionally, the communication at work. This problem is very common to every organization’s failure. If staffs and the whole working team miscommunicate, then everything will fail and will all fall down to poor engineering management.
Why do projects succeed?
Projects succeed because of a good engineering management. By good engineering management, it means the project and the team behind it has effective communication, attainable goals, realistic budget, properly allocated resources, frequent practices of risk management, and most of all, a good engineer manager who has high technical ability, communication ability, and high emotional intelligence. That is the meaning of a good engineering management and if a project has it, then it will definitely succeed.