Expectations of Contractors and Engineers Written by Steven G. Lauck & Jon M. Quigley To ensure the team is working from the same set of expectations, we may develop a document or set of documents that describe those expectations. The work below may help you set up your own documentation on the expectations you have […]
Value Transforming Blog
I have been speaking at many PMI chapter events in North Carolina this year. I enjoy doing these events, meeting new people, discussing different and new things, and sometimes, being introduced to cool old things. One such event was the PMI Asheville Chapter where I met some really interesting people including Eric W. Mythical Man […]
Missing Requirements Sometimes the best way to convey the challenges in product development, is to show some of the reasons things can go wrong. To that end I am going to regale you with a tale of requirements gone astray. Wearing Many Hats I worked at a small company a long time ago. I am […]
It is clear to me that some people think an agile approach means you can willy-nilly delete things in the process. This is also true for conventional project, but I do not think for the same reasons. For conventional projects, it seems time pressures cause elimination of certain functions or processes to keep the schedule. […]
Why formalize root cause analysis? There are many approaches to determining the root of our problems. In the automotive world, there are two typical approaches, the 8D or the 8 Discipline, or the A3 (named for the paper size). We will not go into the details of either of these approaches but you can find […]
Communication and Project Team Distribution There are times when our business does not have all the requisite talent within the walls of the organization. It is nearly impossible to be fully prepared for every opportunity available, and the business and time investment in expertise that is only transitory seldom passes muster. However, when we build […]
Learning and Product Development By now, we should all understand the need for speed when it comes to product development, but not just any speed, it is the need for speed of learning. This is one of the benefits of an agile approach, but this benefit is not restricted to a development methodology, unless of […]
By:” Shawn P. Quigley Whereas we have discussed some of the possible flaws in measurements we can all still agree that they are needed to provide both improvement in processes and the organization. However, other aspects of obtaining data for the production of quantifiable information: trend analysis and process evaluation, is the human factor both […]
We are composing a glossary of test terms and we take one from that work today and discuss here. A development organization can be structured in many ways. The development and testing can be essentially one department under one management structure, or these two areas, development and test can be separated each with a respective […]
To really find the areas for cost improvement we must let go of our mental impediments to uncovering these opportunities. It is very probable that there are plenty of cost improvement possibilities. However, in our daily work execution we may not find the time to free our minds to consider these possibilities. A brainstorming exercise can go far to fuel the imagination, to open a “space” to think laterally at what may be possible. We have successfully employed this technique to:
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