Having the plan is only partially helpful.  The list of test cases and the expected rate of accomplishment allows us to refine our estimates as we progress through the testing.  We will be in a position to provide the project manager and stakeholders with a better “ETA” (Estimated Time of Arrival) just like the GPS […]

In the development phase of the product development life cycle, we are generating ideas for the product. We see opportunities in the market place and wish to explore if we can capitalize (not a vulgar word) upon these opportunities.  Perhaps a new technology has become available to us.  Our organization will want to investigate the […]

Schedule pressures can keep project managers up at night. Frequently the project schedule is not entirely driven by logistics from within the projects but by external pressures such as market or executive pressure.  There are metrics that can be used to help predict, sometimes these are not created, gathered, maintained or have the appropriate follow […]

Many of you who have read our blog know we are fans of the show Aircraft Disaster on the Smithsonian Channel.  We do not like the show for the disaster part, but the root-cause analysis aspects.  These things are intriguing for engineers.  Root cause analysis is an important skill for design engineers, process engineers, and […]

Not all television is not mind numbing.  I enjoy The History Channel and many other similar channels as these are not exactly learning opportunities but close.  However, my son turned us on to a show called House on Netflix[1] and it is very interesting. House (also called House, M.D.) is an American television medical drama that […]

  There are a number of challenges when developing products or systems using multiple suppliers.  My experience mirrors that of those of the Defense & Aerospace Group on LinkedIn that many systems are developed with more than one supplier, each with a sub-assembly or sub-system constituent of the entire system assigned to a multiplicity of […]

I was exploring twitter as I sometimes do in the morning when I came upon this interesting post.  It is true, to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, waterfall is waterfall and agile is agile, and never the twain shall meet[1].  So?   The goal of any project is to successfully deliver the objectives of that project and […]

This may or may not be a true story, but I promise it happens every year.  We start with the customer organization and a supplier that the customer refers to as a partner supplier. This “partner” supplier collaborates with the customer to develop custom components for a larger system the customer sells to their customers. […]

Requirements and Benchmarking One of the things we can do to understand and develop our own requirements is to explore other products that are similar to our proposed product or that solve the same or similar customer problem.  Where there are similar needs met, benchmarking is a way for us to understand how other suppliers have […]