Engineering is all about balance. Consider activities like design or project engineering, for example. Customarily, there are many factors to weigh when pursuing such tasks, and one goal (stated or unstated) is to achieve optimal results. Getting the best is good when you can get it. Of course, it is easy to want optimality, but it's more difficult to define it. Usually, we struggle to attain it. Clearly, we are accountable for what we achieve even though our accomplishments are often weighed as much against opinion and desire as they are against specification.
How do engineers-individually or corporately-get into this situation? Trust me, it is easily done. All we need is a potential customer whose desire and budget for a product/project exceed his or her commitment to forethought and communication. Lest we blame "them," let me confess: Yes! I've done that very thing myself. Like many, I've been on both sides: getting a job or contract before it was adequately scoped because I (the organization, actually) wanted the thing done and taking a job that was inadequately defined because the organization wanted (read needed) the business. This speaks of a balance on the complex plane: fact and feeling on one plane and accountability and control on another.
We want to meet specifications, yet we also want the customer to also feel good when the task is done. They are not the same thing; we negotiate for a job on specifications, but subsequent contracts and good will often hinge more on perceptions and feelings. On the other hand, we are accountable to those specifications and feelings, but if we had our "druthers," we'd rather control both feelings and specifications than to simply account for them. This sounds like the domain of sales, but it is a critical component of engineering practice. The question is, how do we include it in engineering education?
Engineering students are time-constrained and must prioritize their workload as well; at the least, they must satisfy every minimum requirement. It is unlikely that every requirement will be satisfied to the highest standard, so which comers get cut? Such decisions arise throughout the educational experience, and they foretell the nature of decisions we will face throughout our professional careers.
Engineering students face another defining matter, although often not soon enough. In addition to becoming a good engineer (a significant undertaking in its own right), what else is necessary to make a good engineer useful as well? Usefulness requires experience and perspective that are largely beyond the prerequisite abilities for analysis and design. Successful practice requires sensitivity to one's place in the environment and perception of one's work by others.
Questions of balance range over many dimensions and require a broad base. It seems more difficult for non-engineers to participate in engineering activities than it does for engineers to reach beyond their discipline into key non-engineering domains such as finance, risk, strategy, and the like. That is the exciting thing about engineering; the upside possibilities always seem pretty good.
The concept of engineering in balance causes my mind to leap from one realm to another. I start by recalling the obvious and numerous occasions where the upside possibilities of design went hand-in-hand with the downside demands for time and money. An outstanding design in no way assures that its extreme cost is justified. A variation on this matter of choice is when more projects exist than resources-which projects do we prioritize? Why? Let me know at d.wells@ieee.org.