Right, there's a whole spectrum between "a prototype worked once on Bob's laptop, how do we get that live" and "We invented 12 new declarative DSLs that encompass our problem domain, and formally proved their implementations correct."
Engineering isn't the latter end of that, it's precisely just the process of figuring out the trade-offs, the diligence of figuring out where on that spectrum (highly-dimensional continuum really) of process your project should be to get the greatest chances of success. Of course it includes time to market and concepts of "good enough". But it's math and planning and risk accounting and not the cargo culting, handwaving, business platitudes, salesmanship and politics of authority that get utilized in the majority of cases I've seen for making those decisions. These result in monuments to compromise -- the output of arguments between "captain cowboy" and "doctor diligent" (neither of which correctly account for real-world incidence of risk or what that costs the organization which employs them), arguments of engineering without any engineering being done.
Engineering isn't disconnected navel-gazing perfectionism, it's how you prevent it. Engineering is both why we don't live in Kowloon Walled cities, and why most places have water and plumbing and transportation despite a wide variety of obstacles and economic realities that would preclude "ideal" solutions.
Engineering isn't the latter end of that, it's precisely just the process of figuring out the trade-offs, the diligence of figuring out where on that spectrum (highly-dimensional continuum really) of process your project should be to get the greatest chances of success. Of course it includes time to market and concepts of "good enough". But it's math and planning and risk accounting and not the cargo culting, handwaving, business platitudes, salesmanship and politics of authority that get utilized in the majority of cases I've seen for making those decisions. These result in monuments to compromise -- the output of arguments between "captain cowboy" and "doctor diligent" (neither of which correctly account for real-world incidence of risk or what that costs the organization which employs them), arguments of engineering without any engineering being done.
Engineering isn't disconnected navel-gazing perfectionism, it's how you prevent it. Engineering is both why we don't live in Kowloon Walled cities, and why most places have water and plumbing and transportation despite a wide variety of obstacles and economic realities that would preclude "ideal" solutions.