Perspective...

Perspective...  Acquiring a little perspective (aka “wisdom”) may be the main benefit of getting older.  I've been a working engineer long enough to see several engineering management fads come and go.  These are all about managing the process of engineering, rather than doing the actual engineering work itself.  The broadest need for such processes these days is for software engineering, which often has large teams of engineers working on the same product (or parts of it).

All of these processes have the same objective: to reduce the process of engineering to something predictable, measurable, and manageable.  So far as I can tell, all of them can be successful when used by a gifted manager, of which there are approximately 3 in the world at any given time.  The rest just impede the engineers' work, frustrate both the engineers and their managers, and provide fodder for Scott Adams (Mr. Dilbert).  Meanwhile, so far as I can tell, most successful engineering management is driven by one of three things: the teams are small and cohesive (so process is much less needed), there's a gifted leader of the team who holds the whole effort together single-handedly, or the team had a run of amazingly good luck.  I've never – not once – seen an engineering methodology actually work well myself.

The last company I worked for was in the throes of kind of, sort of, but not really adopting “agile” methodologies when I retired.  This post could have been written about them...