We now have linked our scope through to the various levels of requirements. We are then able to prioritize the delivery of the various project obligations.  The prioritization may be based, for example upon: Technical need Customer need Regulatory requirements Complexity and Risk Technical needs are the dependencies to getting the product features working, for […]

This may sound difficult, but there are some rules for good requirements.  According to the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE http://www.incose.org/chicagoland/docs/Writing%20Effective%20Requirements.pdf), requirements should have the attributes below (similarly can be found at IEEE): Necessary –  driven by the objective of the project and business Verifiable – ability to objectively confirmed that the requirement is […]

So how do we ensure we get meaningful requirements? We have a number of ways to understand our objective and learning about the Interviews customer clinics Simulation Digital mock ups Prototype physical mock ups Instrumentation Other information gathering (standards, regulations, etc.) We start with interviews of customers, stakeholders and project sponsors. Interviews also include customer […]

“Scaffolding” is a term often used in education, but in our experience, rarely followed to a significant extent. Scaffolding allows us to grow a student in capability by starting easily and providing progressively more intricate and involved exercises. This approach actualizes Lev Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development. When training clients, we must […]

We have never seen a meaningful employee evaluation system. The abominations are generally designed as a tool to assess the performance of the employee with respect to corporate goals. When they present the illusion of quantification, the values are really qualitative and they will inflate over time as people are ‘soft’ about providing ‘real’ assessment. […]

Ideally, the human resources function or department represents the employee to management and management to the employee. Sadly, in our experience, most human resources people are inclined to support the individuals who sign their paycheck and the employees are left swinging in the breeze. It is no wonder that employees will gravitate towards collective bargaining […]

Many raindrops make an ocean. We have seen a divisional vice-president sneer at a small cost reduction and tell us it was not Six Sigma material. We didn’t care, because permitting small cost reductions makes the practice part of the culture while still adding benefits to the firm. We have already shown in another blog […]

People in education often like to implement “programs.” In fact, we call this syndrome “program-itis” because it leads to inflammation of the budget. As with many corporation, we see people who want to improve a situation decide to follow “best practices” without verifying that these are, in fact, best practices. They can only be best […]