The product owner impacts the sprint set up through the business case. This person is responsible for ensuring the input to the scrum actually makes business sense, and by sense we are talking about economic sense.  The product owner is responsible for ensuring there is business value, without that, there will be no sprint.  The […]

Below is an excerpt from our book Pries, K., & Quigley, J. (2013). Classical Techniques. In Reducing process costs with lean, six sigma, and value engineering techniques (pp. 135-138). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. This is the second part, part one is located here. Miles also identified the concept of basic and secondary functions. Basic functions are the […]

Below is an excerpt from our book Pries, K., & Quigley, J. (2013). Classical Techniques. In Reducing process costs with lean, six sigma, and value engineering techniques (pp. 133-135). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.  FAST Introduction FAST is an acronym for functional analysis system technique. FAST allows us to reduce ambiguity in the definition of a functional product […]

Why do we use tools? We use tools to make our lives better. It would not be very fun to hammer a nail into wood with our hand.   Imagine the situation if we continued communicate via pony express. Sometimes, when we are not aware a tool exists, we may try to fabricate something.  We make […]

Testing and Repeat-ability  Repeat-ability of testing results is important to establishing cause and corrective actions. If it is not possible to repeat the sequence of events leading to a failure, it is not possible to replicate and therefore difficult solve the cause of the fault or failure.  The steps that evoked the problem are necessary […]

    Early Reviews Just finished reading Configuration Management: Theory, Practice and Application, and I must say this is the most comprehensive document I have ever read on the subject. It addresses theory, practice, and application, with many real-world examples of what happens when the principles of product/configuration management are not followed! —Bill Dawson, SVP […]

Concurrent engineering problem take many forms From our last blog, we have learned that of an organization that has concurrent engineering difficulty, specifically coordinating the design work.  We will further explore this situation.  One of the subsystem groups decides to improve the coordination effort internal to that specific department. For example, System 1 chooses to […]

Once upon a time There once was a company, with a systemic problem with concurrent engineering and change management.  This was a complex organization, with many functional areas.  Each functional area, had sub-function divisions.  This type of organizational structure is often referred to as a functional organization with the associated hierarchy.  These various functional areas […]