Rickerism

The essence of engineering is compromise.

Many engineers believe that essence of engineering is optimization or perfection. It is part of their training. Every engineer is taught the concept of a system. A system has a boundary between it and the rest of the universe. Engineers are taught to ignore the universe and optimize the system.

In every design, there are multiple variables that must be solved simultaneously. For instance, if I am designing a combat tank (something dear to my heart), I want the tank to maximize its lethality, mobility and survivability. Its survivability comes, in part, from its armor. The thicker the armor, the heavier the tank becomes and the less mobile it becomes. At a certain point, a tank becomes too heavy to cross bridges. We must compromise armor to increase mobility and we must compromise mobility to increase armor. Through the act of compromising these subsystems, we optimize the system as a whole. The same act of compromise occurs in any engineering effort.

Challenges arise because we compartmentalize the work. Each engineer or engineering team is given a subsystem to design and develop. Each engineer strives to optomize his subsystem and as a result, the system as a whole is compromised or outright fails.

It happens all the time in software. You ask a programmer to create a desktop calculator application, a simple little dialog box that can mimic a common handheld calculator. The programmer sets off on his task and says, “Alright, the first thing I need to do is create the world’s most perfect operating system.” I may be exaggerating, but not much.

Also see: The Essence of Business Strategy