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 […]

Continuing with our communications theme and agile methods, we discuss the question, “what did you do yesterday?”  This simple question places a check in a few project management boxes starting with the mechanism for the control of the output – specifically the feedback portion of our project control system.  Learning what happened yesterday (coupled with […]

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 […]

Another beneficial attribute of Agile, particularly Scrum, is the daily sprint meeting. In this very short and focused meeting that includes the immediate project team and as needed the sponsor, we will learn much about the state of our project. The questions three that are up for discourse are: What did you do yesterday? What […]

“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate” ~ Joseph Priestley In our experience, this is one of the significant benefits of the agile approach to project management.  Agile, with the recurring sprint meetings and constant involvement and participation by the project sponsor greatly facilitates the communications process. We can rely less […]

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 […]

Recently I have had email and physical discussions on the merit (or lack of from some perspectives) of Agile Project Management in developing embedded products.  I think the discussion is more about what is the correct tool for the job at hand.  I have been part of agile managed projects that have delivered wonderfully.  In […]