I believe that they are disconnected because its teamwork vs. individual but I believe they are connected in a strange way.‘individual effort’, ‘making the numbers’, and ‘agreeing with the boss’ leads to ‘teamwork’, ‘achieving challenging stretch goals’, and overall ‘candor’….   Read more»

I would choose a manager role. There were several engineers at my company who would never want to be in management and prefer moving up the ladder as a more senior engineer. This was due to that fact that managers…   Read more»

I believe that to determine if you should outsource a clinical trial or not, you should first develop a scope, WBS, Gantt chart, and budget for these tasks. This will give you an idea of how you would run the…   Read more»

Visualizing the end product motivates me. While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, I helped design new components for the submarine. Sometimes, while working on a document or setting up a meeting between all the stakeholders, you wonder why are…   Read more»

I expected “fair pay” and “benefits” to be higher. I thought the main reason why most people worked was to get paid and have benefits to survive. I actually thought that was the main reason for “work” itself. For me…   Read more»

While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat in the electrical engineering dept, there was a shortage of software engineers. Whenever someone finds out that there was a software engineer with any kind of experience in electrical engineering, they usually were…   Read more»

As a nuclear engineer, I have experience working at nuclear plants in probabilistic risk assessment. At one particular nuclear plant, they use bayesian updating to calculate the risk of a component failing in the nuclear plant. They basically collect data…   Read more»

While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, I was tasked with just replacing a component on a system on the submarine. It was just a simple change out of a component that they said was an old, deteriorated component that…   Read more»

As a nuclear engineer who worked on submarines, a part of the job is lowering radiation exposure or risk for the navy (the customer who works on the product). This means understanding the nature of the problem or radiation. You…   Read more»

In my experience, one generally starts following the process ideally: Initiating Processes, Planning Processes, Executing Processes, Closing Processing. While trying to follow the process, problems usually occur that may require you to revisit a previous step. For example, during the…   Read more»

While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, the culture for the design review meeting was rather relaxed. The design review meeting is schedule at least 4 weeks in advanced so there is ample time to review the documents and discuss…   Read more»

While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, I held several design review meetings and they were usually fairly quick. This was due to the fact that weeks before the design review meeting, I would sent out the materials and ask…   Read more»

ECO gives the chance for a team to admit a mistake was made or a design can be approved and effectively, document and execute that change. The process is first identifying the mistake or improvement and then documenting it properly…   Read more»

While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, I would hold bi-weekly teleconferences with all parties involved in the project. This included people at the Naval Research Laboratory, Lockheed Martin, other vendors, and gov officials. During this meeting, I would take…   Read more»

Another challenge that PMs face is personnel resources or enough people with the right skills to do a job. Sometimes you have a job and you either don’t have enough people available or enough people with the right skills to…   Read more»

When reading this question, the term “enterprise environmental factors” comes to mind which relates to the companies culture, people available and software used. In this situation, I think the companies culture would ensure that even if people are gone on…   Read more»

I think source selection should be done in the executing process. In the planning phase, you are developing many aspects such as the DDP which includes the GANTT chart. I think you should wait until everything including the DDP and…   Read more»

I believe that missing a milestone is really a bad thing in industry. While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, milestones are set and those are part of a contract. When you don’t meet those milestones, it could cost the…   Read more»

While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, I worked on projects that were broken down into departments and other projects that were broken down into “area of expertise” or categories. I can honestly say that breaking a project down by…   Read more»

I think the biggest difference would be the regulations that you have to follow and know in different countries. The plan.do.check.act cycle, PM processes, and design controls can be applied to any situation. The biggest hurdle would be anything to…   Read more»