Future Engineering – Engineers’ Skills in the VUCA World

In Future Engineering – Engineers’ Skills in the VUCA World, you'll learn ...

• Characteristics of the VUCA world: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity
• How new technical disciplines and technologies are trending
• How new domains are expected to emerge (a few examples are included) and how the processes relevant to engineering are likely to develop in the coming years
• The additional technical skills and ethical requirements needed to meet the demands of the VUCA world

Overview

Preview a portion of this course before purchasing it.

Credit: 7 PDH

Length: 78 pages

We all do our best to prepare for what we might think will happen in the future. Engineers can take early, explicit actions that help us to be ready for the upcoming challenges. This course introduces various approaches and tools that will help you be ready for a future that is expected to be dominated by volatility of information, situational uncertainty, project and data complexity and pervasive ambiguity – all together referred to as the “VUCA world”.

The course starts by illustrating how new technical disciplines and technologies are trending, how new domains are expected to emerge (a few examples are included), and how the processes relevant to engineering are likely to develop in the coming years. Building on this knowledge, the course outlines the additional technical skills and ethical requirements needed to meet those demands.

Further, the course describes in detail the characteristics of the VUCA world and its effects on engineering, and outlines a number of methods that can be used to handle those characteristics. They range from deterministic calculations, to human-centered attitudes, all the way to dealing with teams and projects. A few additional helpful approaches are introduced (maintaining optionality, the Cynefin framework), along with specific details on how they work and how they can be used to achieve the most effective results. A few illustrative examples are provided.

This course will be beneficial to engineering personnel of all seniorities, in preparation for the future world: engineers, project managers and aspiring technical leaders. It will equip them with the tools required to manage the new world, and stay ahead of the competition.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

• Describe future trends in the engineering domain, including processes, workflows, methodologies, and innovation.
• Explain the processes that lead to the emergence of new technical disciplines through augmentation, convergence, or novel thinking.
• Identify the technical skills expected of engineers in the future.
• Analyze the effects of future technologies on ethics and appropriate engineering responses.
• Describe the characteristics of the VUCA world: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
• Apply situational optionality to manage VUCA situations.
• Explain how to use the Cynefin framework and intentional or natural movement among the clear, complex, complicated, and chaotic domains to manage VUCA situations.
• Describe the states of aporia and confusion and how to address them in engineering contexts.

Certificate of Completion

You will be able to immediately print a certificate of completion after passing a multiple-choice quiz consisting of 35 questions. PDH credits are not awarded until the course is completed and quiz is passed.