I had a brief chat with Tom Cagley  of the famous SPaMcast the other night about teams. We periodically take time to talk about product development topics, and I frequently appear on SPaMCast podcasts.  Last night we talked about teams an whatever magic makes a collection of individuals move to the point of performing better than the […]

I have been in twitter and real discussions about safe spaces for the product development team to do their work.  I can understand this, nobody should get hurt at work, that is one of the reasons for OSHA, and internal work instructions and equipment.  However, we are not talking about the physical world in our modern […]

Fit Small Business posting on Top 27 Company Culture Ideas from the Pros.  Check out our contribution. The manager must demonstrate what is the epitome of the expected culture. It helps to be egalitarian regarding power in the organization. Your job title should not dampen the discussion or the ideas from the team. I have […]

The Manufacturing Innovation Network Breakfast went great last week.  Nearly all of the seats were full, and there was a plentiful of discussion afterward.   The discussion was about the role of automation in the not so distant future.  We talked about how automation and drones are now even working in the fields. Robots came about due […]

Recent events have prompted us to preempt our CMMI requirements management series for this waste of company resources that we can only attribute to an overly politicized work environment and fear.  The downside of functional or siloed organizations is demonstrated in the sentiment “fix your own sandbox”. Complications of the Organization In general, the work […]

We will continue our review of CMMI and requirements management practices.  As we have seen in the earlier posts, managing the requirements is necessary for efficient development and doing so has positive impacts on the project as well.  Specifically, the project benefits when the organization stands behind attaining the requirements, and is in for a […]

If commitment to the requirements is a significant source of failure, it is followed close behind by the management of changes or additional requirements that come from doing the work.  Though many project managers may believe that once a project is underway, there shall be no changes; that is a myopic approach.  Change happens.  As […]

Continuous Deliver and Embedded Automotive I have worked on projects that employed continuous delivery for embedded products. The embedded product was an automotive component.  The core of the software (the operating system) was specified using conventional approach. This operating system consisted of the maximum model requirements for this globally used component. The component looked and […]

Project Closure and Team Disband One of my favorites and often poorly executed part of a project is the project closure.  Project closure is not just a simple wipe our hands together and smile, then proclaim that we are finished with the project. It is not even handing the customer our results and patting everybody […]