Engineering management in our modern age

The theory and practice of engineering management has developed rapidly in the last forty years to yield a discipline with considerable scope and focus. Educational institutions around the world report significant student interest in this field of study and enrollments are steadily growing as engineers and scientists focus their efforts on developing products and services that produce a business result. The concept of managing engineering and technology has emerged as an area of professional practice that is clearly a career path for many engineers. In this paper a definition of engineering management is presented that links what engineering managers do, how they do it, and for what purpose. Fundamentally, engineering management is the process of envisioning, designing, developing, and supporting new products and services to a set of requirements, within budget, and to a schedule with acceptable levels of risk. The concepts of product and process complexity, systems analysis, risk management, and requirements engineering are used to distinguish the unique features of engineering management that make it a very real discipline of research, study, and practice.