Disturbing Practices in Engineering Design Projects

Abstract

Most references to innovation relate to the development of new products. In this chapter, the authors do not address innovation in these terms; instead, they address them as changes in practices an engineer creatively adopts during engineering design projects. They adopt Actor-Network Theory as a way to understand these change processes (translations). The authors design a perturbation index inspired in Earned Value management to measure translation effort, having in mind the management of scope. Then they assess changes of regime in resource allocation of tasks and conclude some changes can lead to innovative results. That means we gain a wider view about scope, and scope management, being able to observe and change good practices, something crucial in engineering design projects where requirements and goals drift.