The team works toward an objective of developing and releasing software according to a schedule. The delivery date comes, and the team has not achieved the objective. The project manager is at a loss for words. What happened? The team then informs the project manager – “we always said the time was tight”. The team […]
Perhaps some of you recall our post on project commitment. We have a continuation of that story now that is revealing. In that post we saw how not communicating clearly about actions that could possibly happen or actions that were not even remotely possible can put our project at risk. In that post, we show […]
When I was but a young engineer, I was developing an embedded product for a small organization whose product line went all over the world. Partially through the development of the product, a new permutation became needed. The owner of the company, also an Engineer that at one time did work for NASA, asked me […]
Like the Ishikawa Diagram, the Histogram can serve us well. The histogram allows us to visualize the trends based upon a category. It is a graphical distribution of data, in the example below we see the distribution of the duration to prepare an incoming vehicle to be a suitable device to put under test out […]
The daily sprint meeting has connections to our risk management as well. We have seen from the previous posting the fact we are having the meeting daily can hasten our project’s (system’s) ability to respond. The sprint master is now asking about the obstacles or impediments to achieving the objectives of the sprint. Impediments and […]
We felt the need to follow on from our previous blog on tracking testing results in the background using hidden ubiquitous spreadsheet or documents. If all you have is a spreadsheet for tracking, then you make that visible to all relevant stakeholders. If the company has a sanctioned or preferred way of handling “bugs” and […]
We break form our blog run on sprint meetings due to incoming flambé du jour. Sometimes we see organizations that are afraid to use the most fundamental of tools, for example, fault tracking from verification. Instead of using a tracking and visibility tool, we pass back and forth excel sheets behind the scenes. Why would […]
We like this saying: The problem is solved by the person feeling the pain; we see much merit in it and believe it to be an axiom. We have touched upon this a bit in our blog on sponges. We see areas where one part of the company or development process makes due or improvises […]
The customer is the receiver of the output; the customer can be an internal end customer or an intermediary to the next “chain” of events on the way to the final customer. Ultimately, we are aligning our actions (Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, and Outputs) in a way that provides the biggest benefits for our final customer. […]
To go on further with the output discussion, we need to make sure we have an understanding of indicators. Indicators inform us what is going on. My stomach growling is a pretty good indicator that I am hungry, and sweating while mowing the lawn is a good indicator I will need a refreshing beverage upon […]