What is concurrent engineering? Concurrent engineering is when activities are paralleled that could be sequenced. Concurrent engineering can help us deliver the product earlier since we have compressed the schedule by overlapping the various development activities.  There are certain risks associated with this way of working. To be successful and not incur massive rework, it […]

By Kim Robertson and Jon M. Quigley Leveraged Innovation Logistics Mike and Akio had been invited to one of the Genesis Test Equipment logistic repair depot by Lina Hendrik, the facility manager to discuss an idea she had regarding retrofit of a discontinued product line still widely used in an automotive niche market segment. As […]

Models are not new, and neither models in the employ of product development. Product development has always had some basis in discovery and always will. If everything had such a high degree of certainty, likely the product or endeavor has already been done. Developing new things ceaselessly brings questions. To be effective, we want to answer these questions as quickly and as certainly as possible.

What are we trying to accomplish with a communications plan?  Effective project management is the efficient achieving of an organization’s objectives.  To do that, we have to keep our project team informed and working toward the target.  That includes our project sponsor and other stakeholders.  Ultimately our plan should be able to quickly answer the […]

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 and see much merit 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 with the malodorous input received.  The receiving entity may complain and attempt […]

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. […]