Managing Product Development
Process Using Stage Gate Processes
Best Practices in Product
Development start with a robust “Stage Gate”
process. Stage gate processes many times can be
ISO, document management, or spreadsheet driven.
Best practices can be used from the PDMA (Product
Development Management Association) were the “Best”
[upper 20%] were distinguished from the “Rest” - see
diagram.
Hi Performance NPD results can
be reached by converting a stage gate process to
utilize best practices and further to an enterprise
wide project management process……………..read
more.
Enterprise Project
Management Technology Whitepaper
Project driven organizations working in complex
program management organizations can find
simplification, communication, and integration
benefits through a move to Enterprise Project
Management technology. Most organizations in US
Industry today manage or attempt to manage their
projects and programs utilizing standalone MS
Project and standalone MS Excel spreadsheets. In
those organizations with multiple project managers,
the use of many standalone files with data which
resides on multiple computer hard drives causes
redundancy, laborious efforts to integrate and
consolidate project information, and serious lack of
visibility. See diagram.
Huge advancements in project management technology
have been available commercially since 2002 -2003 to
simplify the complex with enterprise project
management- central database –web enabled
technology……………………..read
more.
Integrating Project Scheduling & Resources
When project driven
organizations have multiple projects competing for
the same resources:
-
This environment defines
one of several major categories (which also is
the most common type of complexity in US
industry today) of a complex program management
environment
-
This is the time for those
organizations who have thrived on Excel
spreadsheets for planning & tracking to exit
this methodology and use MS Project - which has
all the capability to handle all aspects of
complex PM environments with only 1/3 the effort
of spreadsheet techniques.
The
goal of integrating schedules and resources is to
have MS Project do the synchronization of using
resource requirements to drive the scheduling
engine. In order to move the project management
organization from documents, schedules in a project
scheduling tool, and resources in a spreadsheet, the
organization must learn how to integrate schedules &
resources in a single tool--- see end result of time
scaled resource demand and capacity forecasts as a
monthly capacity planning capability. See
diagram……….read
more.
Program Management and
Engineering Effectiveness
One of the largest paradigms in
project and program management is the proper use or
lack of use of the proper fundamental principles and
project technology tools. This paradigm causes
laborious effort to plan, track, and be proactive on
project schedule, work requirements and capacity,
and project costs and prevents quality performance
of projects.
There are, in fact, a number of
best practices that practitioners can utilize to
avoid or eliminate laborious effort, simplify the
project management process, and greatly improve
project and program performance. A properly
developed PM methodology developed over time which
integrates project schedules, man hours of
resources, and costs can produce 3:1 to 5:1
improvements in Program Managers and Engineering
project leads. See diagram……………..read
more.
Understanding PPM
(Portfolio, Project Management) Technology for High
Performance results
All the most robust PPM
technologies in the world have been defined and
researched by three major research organizations---
Gartner Research,
Forrester Research, and
IDC (International Data Corporation). These
studies and the resulting data and information
published define the functionality, the breadth, and
capability of portfolio, project, and program
technologies. This is displayed for example, by
Gartner Research in a four quadrant methodology --
see diagram.
No matter what project enabling
tool you or your company favor, any one of the six
PPM technology manufacturers can supply your
organization high performance project schedule,
resource capacity, and cost results……………….read
more.
World Class Manufacturing &
Engineering Product Development and Capital
Investment Product Launch
In
automotive, aerospace, defense, military, and
medical product companies, where product development
launches are on a major investment scale and are a
dominant part of the company’s best in class efforts
to have competitive product launches that place them
in the number 1 or number 2 market position, the
typical 8 keys to WCM success reside not only in
production of your products but have a unique and
major contribution from the product
development—manufacturing engineering launch life
cycle. This includes the product development and
major capital investments performed both internally
and subcontracted outside the company.
Typical results include 15% or greater reduction in
time to market (many times 20% to 25%); reductions
in overtime hours worked premiums and freight
premiums; and 5% to 10% improvements in utilization
of product engineering, manufacturing engineering,
and capital equipment, tools, dies and molds
investments…….read
more.
