Engineering Project Management

406 Pages·2019·9.605 MB·English

by  Neil Siegel

Engineering Project Management
Engineering Project Management
Neil G. Siegel
The IBM Professor of Engineering Management
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, US
This edition first published 2019
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Siegel, Neil G., author.
Title: Engineering Project Management / professor Neil G. Siegel, Ph.D., the
IBM Professor of Engineering Management, University of Southern
California, LosAngeles, US.
Description: Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019016035 (print) | LCCN 2019018487 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119525783 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119525790 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119525769
(hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Engineering–Management. | Project management.
Classification: LCC TA190 (ebook) | LCC TA190 .S586 2019 (print) | DDC
620.0068/8–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016035
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © Westend61/Getty Images
Set in 10/12pt WarnockPro by SPi Global, Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my wife, Robyn.
vii
Contents
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
viii Contents
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
Contents ix
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
x Contents
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
Contents xi
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
xii Contents
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