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Think of the “wasted energy” involved with products that require rework, redesigns, or fail to meet customer needs. In addition, a great deal of time and effort is often put into products after they have been developed to make them more profitable.
The goal of this article series is to help organizations proactively focus on maximizing customer value of products, and minimizing cost of operations during the product development process. Readers will also improve their understanding of problem solving and process improvement tools and methodologies. Some articles will provide high-level perspective while others will deep-dive into specifics.
While product development is not always perfect, companies can emphasize teamwork, establish a framework for innovation & problem solving, and eliminate waste. Meanwhile, employees can develop transferable, marketable skillsets with their knowledge of problem solving tools and methodologies. This article series will also help contribute to these objectives.
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In Part 1 of this article series, we explored a simplified project management process using a phase/gate structure that enables a robust project planning and execution thought process. Now let’s identify some deliverables within each of the phases.
These deliverables would be required and reviewed at each of the gates. Below is a brief description of each:
Organizations often accumulate a list of desirable projects, however, may not have project management bandwidth to filter or manage them effectively.
While project management is a respected discipline, the Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) has swollen to several hundred pages. This level of detail and complexity makes it difficult to absorb and apply for ‘informal’ project managers. [Read more…]
From time-to-time, there are new ways of thinking or shortcuts to solving problems. However, the tried-and-true Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) thought process endures as a fundamentally robust problem-solving thought process.
DMAIC must be properly applied to be effective, however. In this article we’ll consider some important objectives within each DMAIC sub-process.
First, let’s consider each sub-process as an opportunity to perform collaborative problem solving. In the “Define” phase (for example) the stakeholders and team members mutually agree on the problem statement, goals & objectives, process under study, process start/stop points, team members, business impact, etc.
Tasks (or action items) are a fundamental building block of an ongoing work-effort or project schedule. While we tend to think of completed actions as deliverables, a project schedule can also be considered a project deliverable….and the value of well-written task (within the schedule or otherwise) is often overlooked.
Generally, a task begins with a verb (some action to be performed) to achieve a milestone or outcome to some desired level of completion. (Recall a previous related article where we discussed the “definition of done”.)
When considering a business process improvement (or some other) initiative, we also want to communicate to motivate the right behaviors. However, initiatives often seem to use buzzwords or use titles familiar to employees that have seen such initiatives come and go (the key word being “go”).
In previous articles we covered design for six sigma and design for lean. Now let’s take a look at Design for Assembly. We’ll do this by following the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) thought process, and add design for assembly (DFA) subtopics as follows:
When it comes to ensuring a task or deliverable is accomplished, we often see the word “owner” used. Perhaps surprisingly, there really is no true ‘owner’ of anything in the context of program or project management.
We can begin explaining this with two adjectives: responsible and accountable.
In this article series, we covered several topics in the area of product development and project management. We will now begin to explore process improvement with the topic “Design for Lean”. While design for lean may be a subtopic within product development, it helps us understand operational risks, operational costs, enables operational planning and process improvement.
Previous articles have covered product development tools and methodologies such as lean product development, agile, design for six sigma, product life cycle (PLC) and project management processes.
In this article, lets consider “the product” being developed any hardware product, software, IT system, service or new business process. We’ll use the acronym “PSSBP” (Product, Service, Software, Business Process) as an all-encompassing placeholder and to illustrate critical thinking on the topic as follows:
In a previous article, we defined design for six sigma (DFSS) as a thought process focused on maximizing customer value and minimizing cost.
More specifically, DFSS is used to reduce variability in product performance (thereby increasing value), using analytical models and our knowledge of manufacturing variability to enable specification limits on difficult-to-manufacture tolerances to be increased (thereby reducing cost).
For the majority of organizations, long-term success is tied directly to the new product development process. Tomorrow’s revenue and growth are tightly bound to how successful you are at launching new products.
…fewer design iterations to achieve the same goals (reduced time to market), more efficient production and delivery processes (reduced operating costs), fewer defects & warranty costs during the entire product life cycle (increased customer satisfaction).
In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the definition of a requirement, with a ‘story’, which is used in agile/scrum.
The framework for each is somewhat different, however.
Recall the definition of a requirement:
…a requirement defines “what the product (or process) design shall provide <output> at operating conditions <input>”
The framework of a story is as follows:
In this weeks article, we’ll explore how the three disciplines (product development, process improvement and project management) can enable change management.
First, it’s worth reflecting on how these disciplines fit together. Starting with product development our goal is to understand customer value, and to optimize the product (or service) by maximizing customer value and minimizing cost. It can be seen that, process improvement naturally complements this objective as way to further reduce costs. In addition, project management establishes how product development and process improvement is planned, executed, controlled and monitored.
Now let’s look at some key attributes of change management, along with elements of the three disciplines mentioned above.
All projects or programs have a formal or informal resource management process, with the goal of completing projects on time, within budget and with good project quality.
In order to meet this goal, the resource management objectives are:
In a previous article we compared and contrasted the role & responsibility for a scrum master vs. project manager/core team leader (CTL/PM).
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the scrum product owner role and compare it with the product development team’s “opportunity champion”.