Engineering students in general fail to appreciate the importance of management discipline in their "future" career and as a student regard management course as something "foreign" and an "unrelated" to the chosen profession. This attitude of course is understandable given their parochial exposure to real world. As a student you might also have entertained such an attitude and within a short span of time after entering the world of work, you might have felt that " I should have taken management course bit seriously for my own benefit."
Students are always students and the current batch of students(2009-10) who will be studying a course in Management & Entrepreneurship are no different. However they are lucky in a sense to have alumnus like you who can help them change this (rather undesirable) attitude by way of advice, anecdote etc. So kindly tell your juniors what is the "Importance of Management in Engineering career?". More specifically you may describe one or more management principles you came across in working life that you can relate back to management course that you studied ( say annual appraisal meeting etc) and impress upon them. Please put your inputs as comments to this post
Life in a leaf
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Inspired from “The Last Leaf” by O’Henry. It was a bright day, with the Sun
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6 comments:
It is true that most students did not take the management subjects seriously, and looked at these subjects as something that they just need to get through. Having worked for over 2 years now, I can tell with conviction that just being good with the technical stuff isn't sufficient to make a mark. Having a fair idea about some Management principles can go a long way in ensuring that you are very much in sync with what is happening around you at your workplace. If you can be aware of the product managemnt cycle and how the process works, know how to communicate effectively with the clients and your team mates, along with a sound technical background, then nothing can stop you from moving up the ladder.
As software engineers, we always think of being in a project that provides us an opportunity of developing some code which has certain functionality.
But before we start developing code, the project undergoes different phases from initial idea to completion. In fact, development of code is also a phase in a project.
Management subjects help us in understanding various phases involved in a project. The term that we often come across in management subjects is "Project Planning"
I would share some information on the project planning. Project planning involves five main aspects -
Scope - defines what will be covered in a project.
Resource- what can be used to meet the scope.
Time - what tasks are to be undertaken and when.
Quality - the spread or deviation allowed from a desired standard.
Risk - defines in advance what may happen to drive the plan off course, and what will be done to recover the situation.
The above mentioned terms are very much familiar. The reason why I mentioned them is that these are the same terminologies that we have studied in our subjects and these are actually followed by software companies.
So, sometimes we may be asked to prepare a presentation that gives all the details about our project. In such situations, it is not just our coding ability but its is our knowledge in management subjects that comes to our help.
"Planning and Managenet as an elective? Y not ?? Its damn easy and most of it is plain theory..i will take it ", was our thinking a couple of years ago. And m damn sure that most of you will be thinking the same..
But after having been in the software industry for over 2 years..i would like to say that planning and management is a vital factor that decides ones career both professionally and personally.
I would recommend this subject to each one of you.Let me make it clear that after taking this elective..you wont fit into a proj manager's post..but yes..you will certainly know why u should be studying this and how it may be useful in your carrer.Also how planning differs from management and all the different terminologies you need to know.
And yeah your management skills will be very handy when you gotta convince your clients .This will keep both your team, and your manager happy. And very soon..you will climb the ladder of success.
All the very best..make the most of your college lives:)
There are a number of places where being an engineer gives an edge over other graduates in business/management world. At the same time we shouldn't forget that we don't study some subjects/areas which are essential in business world that other graduates learn.
This is a huge topic to discuss in a blog. So, I will take few examples at micro level and try to connect it to business/management.
Let's talk about some areas that I learned as an engineer that gives an edge for an engineer in business world.
1. Operations Research - This is an area where millions of dollars is being spent by number of companies to save. Walmart, gaint retailer, is an example of a successful whose competitive advantage, operations effectiveness, is just based on continuous operations research. I am seeing that every item I learned in operations research is being one place or other.
2. Engieering Maths - As an engineer I spent a lot of time on Maths in various areas like integration, calculus, derivatives etc. Each of these concept is useful in management. For example if you want to develop a statistical model to in a market research/development.
3. Probabilities/Queuing models - This is was one of the subject (and probably least paid attention by students) that is very important if one wants to do anything in business. Let's say I want to built a call center then I need to know about queuing theories to find out how many representatives to hire etc. I need to know about probability theories while developing their shifts. Obviously I am not explaining in detail but the point is that this is one of important and widely used concept in industry - no matter which type it is.
4. Software Engineering - I will not comment on this as subject speaks about itself :)
Obviously what I wrote is just the tip of the iceberg - there's lot more it, but I can say with confidence that every concept I learned as an engineer is valuable, no matter how small the concept is. If I haven't used some of it so far, I am sure I will get to.
I would also like to make a point that there are ares like economics, finance, accounting etc that are also important to business/management which as an engineer one doesn't get to learn (at least I didn't). So, engineers need to be aware of these and pay little attention to what happens outside an engineer's own world.
hi guys,
Personally i too felt that mgmt subjects were timepass and could be cleared or even scored well if i started studying it the day before.So its nothing new that students find it, out of their visibility and fail to understand its importance.
All seniors who have already posted comments have got good experience hence their comments are of importance and note worthy.
I hav just joined the industry and have an experience of just 4 months.But i already have the guilt of not giving mgmt subjects the due importance.They really help u understand the project well so that ur deliverables are of high quality.Without understanding the requirements and analysing the risks involved ,u cannot code quality deliverables.
These mgmt processes help u understand the end goal which reduces rework.It also eases out the communication between u and ur manager.It helps u play those bouncers which normally managers throw at u.
And most importantly u also need some project related jargons during ur appraisal time.So it has only good stuff related with it which is ofcourse balanced out by the boredom u go thru while reading them.
I can go on and on but it will turn out to be another mgmt course .So my advice would be to pay attention towards the mgmt courses.I also know how cramped the semester is ,so try to plan out these courses(see again planning!)
My sincere request to respected staff members would be to arrange an industrial visit,so that students can relate themselves to the processes followed.
Dear Juniors,
First of all I would like to appreciate the master mind who has triggered such a crucial subject “Management and Engineering” as a topic of discussion in this forum.
To be frank I was one among those who always hated the management and always dreamt of studying and working on pure technical stuff. I have worked as a pure developer for 4 years and since 1 year am into the management of a product. Believe me “it is the management which runs the entire show and is truly responsible for the end results”. Now my notion is “Coding/Testing koyi bhi kar sakta/sakti hai lekin Managing sabke bus ki baat nahee ”
Just think of your role as a software engineer, who will get all ready-made specifications, design documents..etc and is asked to code/test. You will like this work in the beginning. But later you will start feeling “am doing nothing, the same code changes, same testing..nothing new”. Yes after few years you may be writing the specification documents. But is it challenging?
Now imagine a managerial role (it can be human resource manager, product/program management). Everyday you will face new challenges. Very often you need to run an intelligent thought process and make wise decision based on the priorities. You are responsible for a set of resources or an entire project or an entire product and its business. That’s nothing but you feel a sense of ownership, which will keep you motivated and drive you to give your 100++% all the time. When you run an entire show you need to communicate well and skillfully present the work, status…etc to the people at various levels. I feel such a kind of job really challenging. And it is the study of Management that prepares you to take up such leadership roles in technology-based organizations. But yes you need to be thorough in technical aspects also and that’s where your profile will have additional weightage.
So “Pay equal attention towards Engineering subjects as well as Management subjects. Focus on technical interests and at the same time tries to gain depth in management principles. Trust me that will surely help you when try going up the ladder in your profession career.”
All the best
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