The importance of delivery

Looking back over the past 20+ years, I can confidently say that the best advice I received was very early on in my engineering career, when I was working as an intern at Thales Optronics Taunton in the UK. A senior colleague said to me, make sure you deliver before you move on to your next project, role or company. As with much of the advice one receives in the early years, one only realises with time its innate value. Hopefully you, reader, will take this on board – at whatever phase you are of your engineering career.

Since receiving said advice I was a member of the team who delivered the Future Integrated Soldier Technology programme to the UK Ministry of Defence. It was demanding and at many times incredibly stressful, but the advice was often in my head, hovering over my fears and doubts. Moving into the space industry I was privileged to be the Systems Engineer for the CaSSIS telescope, part of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, orbiting Mars since 2017. The schedule for the development was incredibly demanding, many experienced engineers did not think it was possible. Yet we delivered.

What does it mean to deliver? For a junior engineer I would say at least take your project through a significant milestone. Ideally see a project through to delivery, the potential for learning on such a journey is hugely significant and will help to inform and mature your decision-making ability for the future. You’ll gain insight into post-delivery processes, administration and reflection. If not through to delivery, get the project successfully through a critical milestone such as the Critical Design Review (or equivalent depending on the industry). There are always many possible excuses for failing to deliver on time, to cost and/or scope, it is key to see through those excuses often just to the narrow path that is a successful delivery. It is your responsibility – and challenge – to see opportunity and a path for progress amongst the stumbling blocks and pitfalls that surround complex systems.

There are many difficult judgements to make during the development of complex products, there is no handbook written telling you how to make each and every possible decision. Even with many years of experience, if one has not worked on a project through significant deliveries of milestones, it can be very challenging to formulate a well-balanced decision, especially for the critical decisions which require strong arguments based upon experience to support. This is where experience of success is so very critical to navigate from the idealistic to the pragmatic.

So if there is only one thing for every junior engineer to remember for their careers, it’s to deliver!

– Mike Johnson