| The Twin Cities IEEE Engineering
Management Society Invites You to Attend:
Engineering Managers: What Keeps You
Up At Night?
Tuesday, January 29, 2002
6:30 pm until 8:00pm
Dunwoody Institute, Room 41
818 Dunwoody Boulevard
Minneapolis, MN.
About the Meeting:
There are many challenges that face today's engineering and project
managers. As managers we are asked to make several decisions every day.
Some of them are easy, and some of them are not. All of us have nights
where we either can't get to sleep or wake up in the middle of the night
thinking about the those tough problems from work. Some abstract examples
of problems that face today's engineering management professionals include
things like:
- Global marketing has introduced competition from all over the world
by companies that have lower product development costs.
- Time to market pressures have reduced product development schedules
to insanely short periods,
- Corporate R&D and product development budgets have been slashed,
but the same amount (or more) of work must be done.
- The recent climate of corporate mergers, acquisitions and
reorganizations make it harder to stay focused on the job at hand.
- Technology has been advancing at an unprecedented rate making it
hard to allocate enough time and resources to simply keep up.
- Consumers are demanding more and more from products for less and
less.
Perhaps the tough problems that keep you up at night a little less
abstract. Some examples might include things like:
- Managing 'prima donna' engineer who's technical contributions are
'vital' to a project, but can not interact with the rest of product
development team in a positive manner.
- Receiving pressure from the marketing department to act in an
unethical (or at least unprofessional) manner.
- Spending a significant amount of time training new team members, but
losing a significant number due to turnover because your employer will
not compensate your staff competitively.
- Having to work with tools and equipment that are outdated and
ineffective because corporate budget restriction do not allow you to
allocate enough money to keeping your equipment current.
- You and your staff are burned out because corporate policy demands
unreasonable amounts of overtime.
This meeting will be an interactive discussion of the problems that
face today's engineering managers. It will be largely driven by the
attendees participation. Please come prepared to share and discuss 1 or
more of the tough problems that you face at work, especially the ones that
keep you up at night. We can't promise any answers, however, we provide a
forum for you to discuss the problems that you face with your peers (and
maybe someone else has already faced the same problem and found a solution
....)
No matter what the problems are that you face as an Engineering
Management professional, this meeting is for you.
Location:
The meeting will be held in Room 41 at Dunwoody Institute at 818 Dunwoody
Boulevard in Minneapolis. Park in the student parking lot across the
driveway from the Institute, not the visitor spaces immediately next to
the building. You will need to sign in at the front door and get a badge.
Although not absolutely necessary, Dunwoody has
asked that we get a list of attendees to them ahead of time so
please pre-register if you can.
Cost:
Free
Agenda:
6:30-6:45 Welcome, Announcements, Introduction
6:45-8:00 Topic Discussion
Feel free come a bit early and socialize
before the meeting starts. If you wish to purchase food, there is a cafeteria at Dunwoody which closes at
6:00pm or you can bring your own food and eat in the student lounge
next to the cafeteria.
Registration:
Dunwoody has asked that we get a list of attendees to them ahead of
time so please
pre-register if possible on or before Monday, January 28th, 2002 using the
online registration form at:
http://www.tc-ieee-ems.org/meetingregistration.htm
|
