A quick survey of available project management tools yields some interesting findings: 1. There are many of them 2. Some are expensive, and not worth the investment 3. Some are free, and still not worth the investment 4. Most are Gantt variants, and Gantt charts don’t tell the whole story Gantt charts are the […]
There are often very good reasons to consider features after the scope has been defined and ratified, but feature additions introduce risks that need to be managed carefully to avoid overruns in cost or schedule, or jeopardize a 60601 submission or FDA audit. A development project has a much greater chance of success if the […]
“Scope Creep” is the (often inadvertent) addition of incremental improvements to a design that are not explicitly identified as project deliverables. Design Engineers are driven to succeed and impress – it’s hard-coded into our DNA, and it fuels our greatest strengths and assets. Our greatest strengths and our greatest weaknesses are often tightly interwoven, however, […]
It’s tempting to believe that the heavy lifting is over once the first prototype is working. In my experience, that is very rarely true if the device is in any way programmable, if it has moving parts, cover panels with mating surfaces, or even a rudimentary user interface. In the tightly-regulated medical environment, the heavy […]
It’s easy to send a project sideways: all you need to do is identify a brilliant, expedient solution and unleash your brightest designers and engineers to implement it. You’ll reach your destination even faster if you add some schedule pressure or cost constraints to the mix. The outcome is invariably disastrous. A project is far […]