30 results found for The Design Factory, displaying items 1 - 20
June 18, 2001 Consensus Conspires To Produce Bad Designs
Once upon a time, the Universal Spaghetti Sauce Company's management began using cross-functional teams to design new spaghetti sauces. Supersauce was the first team to use this approach. Its sad story started when it met to develop a specification...
—
Don Reinertsen
March 19, 2001 When Should We Review Product Development Programs?
There are two schools of thought as to when you should conduct progress reviews for product development programs. The dominant school advocates event-driven reviews—by this I mean those reviews that are synchronized with key project events....
—
Don Reinertsen
March 5, 2001 Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It
Years ago, the television show Mission Impossible always began with a scene in which the team leader, Mr. Phelps, would receive a tape describing his next mission. The tape invariably began, "Your mission, should you choose to accept it..."...
—
Don Reinertsen
December 4, 2000 How To Make New Team Members Become Productive Quickly
Ogg, the Cro-Magnon design engineer, sat in a meeting wondering what to do. He had just been transferred to the Mammoth Whacker VI project, which was already halfway complete, when one of the former design engineers was lost during field trials....
—
Don Reinertsen
November 20, 2000 Disagree And Commit: The Risk Of Conflict To Teams
Long ago, Ogg, the Cro-Magnon design engineer, attended his first team meeting at the Bison Valley Ax Works. He was completely unprepared for the level of conflict that he observed. Engineers appeared offended when members of the marketing...
—
Don Reinertsen
August 21, 2000 Debunking The Fairy Tale Of The Great Process Map
Once again, Mr. Big, the general manager of the Bison Valley Ax Works, was upset with his disorganized engineers. Remembering how process maps had improved the operation of his factory, he decided to take action. He called Grnk, the vice president...
—
Don Reinertsen
August 7, 2000 Keeping The Vendor Off The Critical Path
Product developers sometimes ask me how they can shorten development cycles when 80% of their cycle time is dictated by vendor lead times. They correctly point out that most of their product development lead time is determined by long lead-time...
—
Don Reinertsen
July 24, 2000 Sometimes We Learn The Wrong Thing
One day Ogg, the Cro-Magnon design engineer, was invited by Snrg, the marketing manager, to play goof (an early form of golf) at the Bison Valley Country Club. Snrg was quite good at goofing because he worked in marketing, where this, like eating in...
—
Don Reinertsen
July 10, 2000 Garbage In Does Not Always Mean Garbage Out
For decades I had heard the expression "garbage in, garbage out" and nodded my head reverently. Of course, I thought, no answer could be more accurate than the accuracy of its input assumptions. Only recently have I realized that this isn't always...
—
Don Reinertsen
June 26, 2000 Finishing The Engineering On The Factory Floor
One day Otto, the manufacturing engineer, did a good deed and guided a lost marketeer back from the hard concrete floors of manufacturing to the plush carpets of marketing. Suddenly, he saw a puff of smoke and a tall green genie appeared. In a...
—
Don Reinertsen
June 12, 2000 Drastic Stretch Goals Can Do More Harm Than Good
Ogg, the Cro-Magnon ax designer at the Bison Valley Ax Works, developed a schedule for the Mammoth Whacker III (MWIII). He carefully examined his timesheets for previous ax design projects to estimate how long each subtask should take. He adjusted...
—
Don Reinertsen
prev. page
[1]
