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 […]
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 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. […]
How do we know when our output is successful? Well, when the customer takes acquisition can be the first tangible evidence for many organizations the output is “good”. So we know what we mean by good, I provide a brief list: capabilities of the output can be deployed suitable quality (Key Product Characteristics are met) […]
Our organization’s structure can confound what constitutes and output. Consider the company that is structured as a “functional” organization, the output from one group will typically go to another group in the system. This organization structure is sometimes referred to as “silo” since each part of the company, group or department is segregated by expertise. This has […]
Each process produces some sort of, at least intermediate output. The ultimate output will be the resultant of the series of inputs, processes and outputs, and will be directed toward the ultimate end customer. Therefore the ultimate output capability is the collection of all of the inputs and processes of the systems of the organization. […]