We want to begin by saying we hope all our readers, authors, and their families are doing well during this trying time. We are extremely grateful to the first responders, nurses, doctors and all the other folks providing essential services during this pandemic. We would like to also thank our reviewers and associate editors for continuing to provide such stellar support in these difficult times. We would like to let you know we are doing our best to continue to move manuscripts through the review and publication process. We ask folks to be a little more patient as many people have had to make enormous changes to their work environment and style. We will strive to continue to bring rigorous academic research and relevant value adding practitioner papers that contribute to the engineering management profession. This issue contains six articles representing authors from around the globe. We would like to thank all of our reviewers who contributed to the peer-review process as well as Associate Editors Salado, Cudney, Nachtmann, Qin, and Bastian (two articles) for their contributions to this issue. Our issue begins with a paper entitled “An Analysis of Theories Supporting Agile Scrum and the Use of Scrum in Systems Engineering” furthers the study of agile methodology beyond software development. A review of Agile and ModelBased Systems Engineering is presented along with a process for employing the Agile technique of Scrum for Systems Engineering. In “Mapping Uncertainty for Risk and Opportunity Assessment in Projects,” a team from American University of Sharjah and Middle East Technical University introduce the concept of “uncertainty thinking” as a means of modeling uncertainty and opportunity. The authors posit that managing risk alone neglects potential opportunities and may result in less than optimal decisions. Metrics for loss and opportunity are presented. This work provides engineering managers a case study illustrating an example for implementing the techniques. In our third article, “Key Success Factors and Benefits of Kaizen Implementation,” 49 manufacturing companies are surveyed resulting in the identification of five key success factors for implementing kaizen. The author finds that front-line worker education, training, and involvement are critical to successful kaizen implementation. The fourth paper in this issue, a timely contribution given the current move to virtual work environments, is entitled “A Four-Pillared Holistic Model for Improving Performance in Engineering Virtual Project Teams“ contributed by Josh Lumseyfai from George Washington University. This article explores some of the additional challenges such as managing tasks, communicating, and collaborating that virtual teams face. The authors discuss the importance of facilitation and governance. The authors develop a four-pillared holistic model for enabling successful virtual project teams. Engineering professionals who are responsible for leading virtual teams can gain insight into specific techniques for facilitating successful virtual teams including effective virtual team governance controls, practices for effective interaction across members, technologies for efficient communication and collaboration, and factors of the organization environment that contribute to enhanced virtual team performance. Engineering professionals and leaders can use the model to objectively assess their current gaps and apply applicable techniques from the holistic model that add value to their organization. The next paper, entitled “Planning a Complex Mine Construction Project under Price Cyclicality,” by Matt Renaud and Mustafa Kumral from McGill University, explores the challenges and intricacies associated with scheduling mining projects. In the paper, the authors develop a method for scheduling large complex projects using a combination of the Critical Path Method and a Linear Programming formulation in order to maximize the value for mega-mining projects. The authors illustrate their technique using a case study. Although designed for engineering managers in the mining industry, the model has broad application to large complex projects that have significant challenges when timing affects the value of the project and tolerance margin for delays is narrow. The final paper in this issue, “Mapping Strategy to Best Practices for Sustainable Food Manufacturing Using Fuzzy DEMATEL-ANP-TOPSIS,” maps content strategy for large manufacturing firms that support sustainable manufacturing to well established practices in the literature. Mapping content strategy to established practices provides insight to engineering managers as these practices have already established implementation insights and guidelines as well as measurement and evaluation mechanisms. The paper concludes by using a case study from the Philippines that illustrates the importance of total quality management to sustainable food manufacturing. EMJ invites participation and articles from both industry and academia. We welcome all types of research methodologies that are applicable to the current engineering management domain. For questions or inquiries, please contact us at: epohl@uark.edu and smith@ise.msstate.edu.

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我们首先想说，我们希望我们所有的读者、作者和他们的家人在这个艰难的时期一切顺利。我们非常感谢在这场大流行期间提供基本服务的急救人员、护士、医生和所有其他人。我们还要感谢我们的审稿人和副主编在这些困难时期继续提供如此出色的支持。我们想让您知道，我们正在尽最大努力继续在审查和出版过程中移动手稿。我们要求人们多一点耐心，因为许多人不得不对他们的工作环境和风格做出巨大的改变。我们将努力继续为工程管理专业带来严谨的学术研究和相关的增值从业者论文。本期包含六篇文章，代表来自世界各地的作者。我们要感谢为同行评审过程做出贡献的所有审稿人以及副主编 Salado、Cudney、Nachtmann、Qin 和 Bastian（两篇文章）对本期的贡献。我们的问题始于一篇题为“支持敏捷 Scrum 的理论分析和 Scrum 在系统工程中的使用”的论文，进一步研究了超越软件开发的敏捷方法论。对敏捷和基于模型的系统工程进行了回顾，并介绍了使用 Scrum 敏捷技术进行系统工程的过程。在“映射项目中风险和机会评估的不确定性，”来自沙迦美国大学和中东技术大学的一个团队引入了“不确定性思维”的概念，作为对不确定性和机会建模的一种手段。作者认为，仅管理风险会忽略潜在的机会，并可能导致不太理想的决策。提供了损失和机会的指标。这项工作为工程经理提供了一个案例研究，说明了实施这些技术的示例。在我们的第三篇文章“Kaizen 实施的关键成功因素和好处”中，对 49 家制造公司进行了调查，确定了实施 Kaizen 的五个关键成功因素。作者发现一线工人的教育、培训和参与对于成功实施改善至关重要。本期第四篇论文，鉴于当前向虚拟工作环境的转变，这是一项及时的贡献，题为“提高工程虚拟项目团队绩效的四支柱整体模型”，由乔治华盛顿大学的 Josh Lumseyfai 贡献。本文探讨了虚拟团队面临的一些额外挑战，例如管理任务、沟通和协作。作者讨论了促进和治理的重要性。作者开发了一个由四个支柱组成的整体模型，以支持成功的虚拟项目团队。负责领导虚拟团队的工程专业人员可以深入了解促进成功虚拟团队的特定技术，包括有效的虚拟团队治理控制、成员之间有效交互的实践、用于有效沟通和协作的技术，以及有助于提高虚拟团队绩效的组织环境因素。工程专业人士和领导者可以使用该模型客观地评估他们当前的差距，并应用整体模型中的适用技术，为他们的组织增加价值。下一篇论文题为“在价格周期性下规划复杂的矿山建设项目”，作者是来自麦吉尔大学的 Matt Renaud 和 Mustafa Kumral，探讨了与调度采矿项目相关的挑战和复杂性。在论文中，作者开发了一种结合使用关键路径方法和线性规划公式的大型复杂项目调度方法，以最大化大型采矿项目的价值。作者使用案例研究说明了他们的技术。尽管该模型是为采矿业的工程经理设计的，但它广泛应用于大型复杂项目，这些项目在时间影响项目价值且延迟容限很窄时面临重大挑战。本期的最后一篇论文“使用模糊 DEMATEL-ANP-TOPSIS 映射可持续食品制造最佳实践的策略”，将支持可持续制造的大型制造公司的内容策略映射到文献中的成熟实践。将内容策略映射到既定实践为工程经理提供了洞察力，因为这些实践已经建立了实施洞察力和指南以及测量和评估机制。本文最后使用了一个来自菲律宾的案例研究，该案例研究说明了全面质量管理对可持续食品制造的重要性。EMJ 诚邀工业界和学术界的参与和文章。我们欢迎适用于当前工程管理领域的所有类型的研究方法。如有问题或疑问，请联系我们：epohl@uark.edu 和 smith@ise.msstate.edu。