It’s the second or third critical path that can sneak up and bite you…

Focusing solely on the main critical path can lead to project delays, as other paths may slip unnoticed. Analyzing and managing multiple critical paths, especially the second and third ones, is crucial for achieving on-time project completion. Regularly monitoring and addressing potential issues in these paths can prevent delays and ensure timely project delivery.

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Positive vs Negative Buffer (i.e. Margin)

For projects that require little to no innovation, eliminate time buffers. We call these “negative time buffers.” For these types of projects, work will expand to fill the time available for its completion when excessive buffer or margin time is added to the schedule. Pull the schedule ahead of target. Deposit that time into the time-bank. That time ahead of the target is the positive buffer.

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What is your confidence in solving that problem on that date?

What is your confidence in solving that problem on that date? This question is typical in every innovation project. Innovation projects, by definition, drive the technological envelope into the unknown. So how can you plan what you don’t know? You can’t, but you can make assumptions about how many tries it may take before you find a solution, based on the complexity of the problem you are trying to solve, in order to achieve the innovation required.

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The Waterfall

The Waterfall

We recently published a post on the similarities between FTTM and Agile. Written in response to confusion which sometimes arises where clients are under the impression that one must choose between the FTTM methodology or the Agile methodology, and somehow they are seen as competing methodologies. FTTM and Agile methodologies have more in common than they do differ (high customer satisfaction through continuous improvement, flexible requirements, self-organizing teams, etc.). Where we differ, is in the implementation.

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Agile and FTTM

Agile and FTTM

We are frequently asked to compare Agile and FTTM (fast-time-to-market). FTTM is the process of delivering the right-product at the right-time. It seems that people want to compare these two approaches to managing projects, as competitors to one another. The problem is not the principles behind Agile, which you will see are very similar to FTTM, but rather the way in which Agile software vendors implement software to track Agile-based projects, more on this later.

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The 4 questions

The 4 questions

So you're chairing your 3 hour monthly project review. The project manager is presenting the current dates, the dates from the last review and the target dates. You listening and yet you don't feel that you have the whole picture. People use words like Portfolio Management and companies supply sophisticated tools, giving you a mass of information to "manage" your portfolio.

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Collaborative new product development supply chain

Collaborative new product development supply chain

When we think of supply chain, we think of manufacturing and the problem of various materials suppliers feeding a chain that leads to the manufacturing of goods. The same supply chain concept is applied to product development today with the ever increasing complexity of technology products and global market distribution. We called this a development supply chain. Typically this is characterized by customers and suppliers of product development teams that lead to the integration of sub-components into a system at the end of the chain closest to the final customer.

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Failure of perception, not of performance

Failure of perception, not of performance

Where do your schedule target dates come from? Are they fact or fiction?

In our experience, schedule target dates (i.e. the point in time which something is needed to be delivered) are difficult to determine. They should be driven by customer demand/needs, but all to often they are artificially generated by either top management or external partners in the case of co-development projects.

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