Posts by Rob Allen
Requirements versus Stories
In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the definition of a requirement, with a ‘story’, which is used in agile/scrum. Both requirements and stories establish a clear understanding of customer needs in the context of desired functionality. The framework for each is somewhat different, however. Recall the definition of a requirement: …a requirement defines “what…
Read MoreWhat is Design for Six Sigma?
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. Offering genuinely valuable, high quality products is, more than ever, the best way to capture market share. Also, more investment up-front minimizes overall…
Read MoreWhat is DFx?
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…
Read MoreCritical Thinking for Product Development
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…
Read MoreDesign for Lean
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…
Read MoreWhy an owner of a task or deliverable doesn’t really exist…
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. Responsible is simply the person responsible for completing…
Read MoreWhat is Design for Assembly?
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: Recall the objective of DFSS/DFA is to model and improve design…
Read MoreWhy Excellence May Not Be the Best
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”). A few common initiative titles include: Business Excellence (BusEx)…
Read MoreIs a Task a Deliverable?
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…
Read MoreWhy DMAIC Endures as a Robust Thought Process
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…
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