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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

How do we know when our output is successful?  Well, when the customer takes acquisition can be the first tangible evidence for many organizations the output is “good”.  So we know what we mean by good, I provide a brief list: capabilities of the output can be deployed suitable quality (Key Product Characteristics are met) […]

Each process produces some sort of, at least intermediate output. The ultimate output will be the resultant of the series of inputs, processes and outputs, and will be directed toward the ultimate end customer. Therefore the ultimate output capability is the collection of all of the inputs and processes of the systems of the organization. […]

When we write about input, we are discussing the nature of the exchange to the depending group. The Systems Engineers, in our previous example, need some input from the Marketing staff to be able to design something to achieve the marketing personnel objective and subsequently meet the customer’s need.  What is that input? For example, […]