Crafting Engineering Strategy

Chapter 2. Is Engineering Strategy Useful?

While I frequently hear engineers bemoan a missing strategy, their complaints rarely articulate why the missing strategy matters. Instead, it serves as more of a truism: the economy used to be better, children used to respect their parents, and engineering organizations used to have an engineering strategy.

This chapter starts by exploring something I believe quite strongly: there’s always an engineering strategy, even if there’s nothing written down. From there, we’ll discuss why strategy, especially written strategy, is such a valuable opportunity for organizations that take it seriously.

We’ll dig into:

• Why there’s always a strategy, even when people say there isn’t

• How strategies have changed companies I’ve encountered

• How inappropriate strategies create significant organizational pain without much compensating benefit

• How written strategy drives organizational learning

• The costs of not writing strategy down

• How strategy supports personal learning and development, even when you’re not empowered to “do strategy” yourself

By this chapter’s end, I hope you will agree with me that strategy is an undertaking worth investing your time—and your organization’s.

There’s Always a Strategy

Every company I’ve worked in has had at least one engineer who felt the company didn’t have an engineering strategy. Once I became an executive and could document and distribute an engineering strategy myself, complaints about missing strategy ...