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 […]

Recently, on Twitter, I had to express my discontent with the word Pragmatic.  My spontaneous outburst so amazed me that I decided to explore this further.  The definition on dictionary.com[1] is: Of or about a practical point of view or practical considerations Philosophy of or about pragmatism Of or about pragmatics Treating historical phenomena with […]

The project organization should use the Configuration Management process to script the project and product growth – instead of just the version control. In this way the product content is adjusted formally from the learning that should have happened in the prior work.

We have referred to Stochastic Testing in an earlier blog post as an exploratory technique.  We provide a Google definition of exploration below: Exploration – the action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it. Stochastic testing is not compliance testing (requirements) even though we are exercising the product […]

The olden days… A long time ago (seemingly) I graduated from university with my engineering degree.  I was lucky, my first job was with a small company and I performed many roles as it applied to developing their new product line.  The product was an embedded strand process control unit. This unit would control older […]

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 is “watermelon” green? Watermelon.  A great treat in the  summer. The dark green rind, the yummy bright red center. Recently I had lunch with an IT friend named Phil.  We were talking about checklists and determining project “status” when he mentioned the color Watermelon Green.  I chuckled.  Then I continued a bit afraid to […]

What is severity? We have been spending considerable time on risk in preparation for our up coming Piedmont Triad PMI Risk Management event.  Our last specific risk blog we discussed risk and probability.  That is only a part of the equation.  We are interested in probability, but we also need to know the severity.  Severity […]

 TIEMPO – Test, Inspection, Evaluation Master Plan Organized by Jon M. Quigley and Kim Robertson PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEST, INSPECTION AND EVALUATION Ensuring product quality is not accomplished solely through testing and verification activities. Testing is but a fraction of the techniques that are at an organization’s disposal to improve their development quality.  Good planning of the […]