Engineers solve problems. Doesn't mean all problems are defined properly. That's why part of the hype around design thinking is about solving the right problem before solving the problem right.
Working with limited information means making decisions that might turn out to be bad ones down the line. I agree with your statement, but the opportunity cost of figuring out the exact right problem to solve is inaction, and inaction is often worse than making a poorly-informed judgement.
> but the opportunity cost of figuring out the exact right problem to solve is inaction, and inaction is often worse than making a poorly-informed judgement.
That reminds me a lot of the days when managers did not want to do proper code testing and coverage because without that they could ship more code. Defining the problem upfront and doing rapid iteration not just on the solution but also problem definition is nowadays more important and effective than just shipping.
Definitely a legitimate consideration. There's always a balance between exploring and exploiting, with an equilibrium point somewhere. My experience is biased by many situations where exploration was unduly limited.
Or was just not done in good faith. Which is why having a culture of openness and honesty and acceptance of failure (to an extent) is important to building an effective engineering culture.
Agreed, and in the author's instance that makes sense but generalizing the problems faced in a specific region that is known for not-so-great government to engineering as a whole is ignoring a lot of context to decision-making, good or bad.
Engineers solve problems but we have to work within constraints - be it technological, economic, political etc. It's very rare (never in my career) that I've been given free reign to implement a "perfect" solution.
There is always, always trade offs involved in engineering. As for which trade offs are acceptable sometimes you have influence over that and sometimes it's out of your hands. Design thinking is a tool that can help but it is not a panacea.
For people that don't work in the field perhaps it's not obvious. A good friend of mine is a PHD chemist who works in research (I work as a Materials Engineer in industry) he is always winding me up about engineers doing a half-assed job. I've always thought that our interactions highlight one the key differences between science and engineering, scientists strive for perfection if you will and engineers want workable...
And a bit of a big ask connecting some SV scooter sharing start up to old school civil engineering.
From experience working for a leading hydrodynamics organisation you don't mess around with nature lightly ok you can do costal defence but you just move the problem around.
Oh and normally its the technician who fixes the "engineers" math :-)