I have come across a couple of lecturers on VU which have got me thinking.

Both the lecturers were teaching engineering courses. One started describing a typical IT project team ‘… and when you work, you will find a project manager, a team lead, a system analyst…’

The other was describing system specifications when he said ‘…so the requirements are what your clients’ teams will use to see if the system you created for them is accurate…’

What does both of these have to do with engineering?

In the above, nothing says that teams will necessarily have the hierarchy required — in fact finding a more efficient arrangement may give your engine a bigger advantage. Why are we conditioning students to expect that you will always be creating requirements specs for clients — what happened to product dev?

It is sad when the professors doing this have actually studied and worked in the UK / USA.

Are we really only training technicians that can ‘fill the numbers’ of IT professionals graduating in Pakistan? As in, since when did we decide that students should only learn the bare minimum required for an IT company to find the employees it needs to deliver? Since when did we decide to permanently hinder the intellectual growth a student may wish to experience in his chosen profession?

Shouldn’t we teach them instead of the importance of precision in their approach to engineering a system, irrespective of the team structure, or document processes created?