We have compiled the results from our Engineering/Operations Management survey. Our major takeaways include:
- Responsibilities – The most common responsibility (88%) is ‘Improving systems and processes’ so managers recognize the importance of developing good project methodology and tools. Not surprisingly, allocating resources (76%) and monitoring project budgets (71%) are also common responsibilities. We also found it interesting that ‘customer service’ is commonly owned by engineering management and not relegated to another group. Finally, we saw mentions of ‘sales’ and ‘safety’ as unsolicited responses.
- Goals – The overwhelming goal is ‘collective project success’ getting 4x the responses of lesser goals such as project methodology consistency and employee development. We noted that project success didn’t necessarily equate to profitability, but rather included other factors, namely customer satisfaction.
- Challenges – The responses regarding challenges were more evenly dispersed with ‘People’ garnishing the most attention. Comments included the need to recruit and retain engineering talent, but also employee development and identifying/nurturing leaders. We’ve also heard in our peer groups that on-boarding and mentoring young engineers has become more challenging in our largely remote work environments during the pandemic.
As a thank you to participants, we awarded 5 participants an Amazon gift card and recommended The Manager’s Path – A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change. We will continue to collect data for our research, so please consider participating our Engineering/Operations Management survey
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