Business Management for Engineers: How I Overcame My Moment of Inertia and Embraced the Dark Side

Business Management for Engineers will help anyone with a technical background understand, and appreciate, the business side of the engineering profession. This book is intended to make you more successful as an engineer by giving you a better understanding of how organizations conduct business.

Mastery of a technical skill is quite fulfilling, but if you want to be more than a technical contributor you must know how to work within the business constraints as well.

If we define engineering to be the application of science, then business is the application of economics. We’ll go a step further and define engineering to be the application of science to develop new products or services that are “useful”; and business to be the application of economics to develop new products or services that are “profitable”.

A product may be of interest to a great many people, but if the business providing it is not profitable, the business will lose money and, barring financial subsidies, will go out of business – so the product will disappear from the market.

Similarly, a product may generate world class profits, but if the product is not useful – if it does not add value to the buyer – no one will buy it, so again the product will disappear from the market.Engineering and business, go hand in hand. To be truly successful, engineers must develop products that are both useful AND profitable.

This book will help anyone with a technical background appreciate the business aspect to the project you are supporting. Even if you work for a “not for profit” business, any project you will be assigned to will have a budget and schedule. Exceed the budget and the business must cut other projects to pay for the overrun. Fall past due on the schedule, and the business will have to find a way to make up the lost time – maybe by cutting other projects. There is always a business aspect to any engineering project. Business Management for Engineers will help technical professionals understand how to balance business success with technical excellence.

Alan Tribble is a program manager in the aerospace and defense industry. He started his career as a space environment effects specialist for spacecraft design teams. He holds a B.S. in Physics from the University of Arkansas, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Iowa. He is the winner of the 2008 James A. Van Allen Space Environments Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.