Book excerpt: Every engineer must eventually face their first daunting design project. Scheduling, organization, budgeting, prototyping: all can be overwhelming in the short time given to complete the project. While there are resources available on project management and the design process, many are focused too narrowly on specific topics or areas of engineering. Practical Engineering Design presents a complete overview of the design project and beyond for any engineering discipline, including sections on how to protect intellectual property rights and suggestions for turning the project into a business. An outgrowth of the editors' broad experience teaching the capstone Engineering Design course, Practical Engineering Design reflects the most pressing and often-repeated questions with a set of guidelines for the entire process. The editors present two sample project reports and presentations in the appendix and refer to them throughout the book, using examples and critiques to demonstrate specific suggestions for improving the quality of writing and presentation. Real-world examples demonstrate how to formulate schedules and budgets, and generous references in each chapter offer direction to more in-depth information. Whether for a co-op assignment or your first project on the job, this is the most comprehensive guide available for deciding where to begin, organizing the team, budgeting time and resources, and, most importantly, completing the project successfully.