Shipulski On Design

Archive for the ‘Fundementals’ Category

For the past two decades, I’ve actively developed engineering leaders.  A good friend asked me how I do it, so I took some time to write it down.  Here is the curriculum in the form of How Tos:

How to build trust.  This is the first thing.  Always.  Done right, the trust-based informal networks are stronger than the formal organization chart. Done right, the informal networks can protect the company from bad decisions.  Done right, the right information flows among the right engineers at the right time so the right work happens in the right way.

How to decide what to do next. This is a broad one.  We start with a series of questions: What are we doing now?  What’s the problem? How do you know? What should we do more of?  What should we do less of?  What resources are available? When must we be done?

How to map the current state.  We don’t define the idealized future state or the North Star, we start with what’s happening now.  We make one-page maps of the territory.  We use drawings, flow charts, boxes/arrows, and the fewest words. And we take no action before there’s agreement on how things are.  The value of GPS isn’t to define your destination, it’s to establish your location.  That’s why we map the current state.

How to build momentum. It’s easy to jump onto a moving steam train, but a stationary one is difficult to get moving.  We define the active projects and ask – How might we hitch our wagon to a fast-moving train?

How to start something new. We start small and make a thought-provoking demo.  The prototype forces us to think through all the elements, makes things real, and helps others understand the concept. If that doesn’t work, we start smaller.

How to define problems so we can solve them easily. We define problems with blocks and arrows, and limit ourselves to one page.  The problem is defined as a region of contact between two things, and we identify it with the color red.  That helps us know where the problem is and when it occurs. If there are two problems on a page, we break it up into two pages with one problem.  Then we decide to solve the problem before, during, or after it occurs.

How to design products that work better and cost less. We create Pareto charts of the cost of the existing product (cost by subassembly and cost by part) and set a cost reduction goal.  We create Pareto charts of the part count of the existing product (part count by subassembly and part count by individual part number) and define a goal for part count reduction.  We define test protocols that capture the functionality customers care about. We test the existing product and set performance improvement goals for the new one.  We test the new product using the same protocols and show the data in a simple A-B format. We present all this data at formal design reviews.

How to define technology projects. We define how the customer does their work.  We then define the evolutionary history of our products and services, and project that history forward.  For lines of goodness with trajectories that predict improvement, we run projects to improve them.  For lines of goodness with stalled trajectories, we run projects to establish new technologies and jump to the next S-curve.  We assess our offerings for completeness and create technologies to fill the gap.

How to file the right patents.  We ask these questions: How quickly will the customer notice the new functionality or benefit? Once recognized, will they care? Will the patent protect high-volume / high-margin consumables? There are more questions, but these are the ones we start with.  And the patent team is an integral part of the technology reviews and product development process.

How to do the learning.   We start with the leader’s existing goals and deliverables and identify the necessary How Tos to get their work done. There are no special projects or extra work.

If you’re interested in learning more about the curriculum or how to enroll, send me an email mike@shipulski.com.

Image credit — Paul VanDerWerf

Business is about the effective allocation of resources.  Companies win when they do that better than their competitors.  Full stop.  If you believe that, the question is how to allocate resources effectively.  To me, everything starts with a map of the territory – a single-page map of today’s projects, the people you have, and the tools/infrastructure you have.  In short, before you can reallocate resources, map how you allocate them now.

Let the mapping begin.

The first step is to create a one-page summary (a map) of the resources on hand and the projects they work on (how they are allocated).  A simple spreadsheet is the way to go.  At the top, running left to right, list the names of all the people. Give each person their column.  On the left, running top to bottom, list the active projects, one project per row.  For each project, move left to right and ask if the person works on the project.  Put an X in their column if they contribute to the project in any way.  If they work on the project 2% of their time or more, X marks the spot.  You will be reluctant to do this, but the process is more meaningful if you do.

No fancy formats, no extra text, no headings, no footers, just columns of people against rows of projects.  And it MUST fit one page. MUST. Reduce the font size and the margins to fit it on one page. And if that doesn’t work, set the print area and choose the setting that scales the print area to fit on one page.  Put it on 11 by 17 paper if you must, but you must put it on one page.  You’ll have to squint to read the font when you do it right.

When you look at the one-page printout, the first thing you will notice is that you have too many rows because you have too many projects. (And, yes, you should list the quiet projects no one knows about.) The second thing you will notice is that everyone has too many Xs because they work on too many projects.  The third thing is some people have far more Xs than everyone else’s too many Xs.  All the project managers want them on the projects because they are good at getting projects done.

Let the culling begin.

It’s time to stop.  The best way to stop is to set a maximum time threshold to deliver the first dollar of revenue.  Any project that cannot deliver revenue sooner than the threshold should stop.  The threshold method is crude, fast, and effective.  It’s a great way to do the first pass culling.  For those projects that are difficult to stop due to political factors, don’t stop them but, rather, strongly pause them.  Then, use the reallocation process (described later) to move resources to better projects and let the politically charged projects die a slow death.  Good process beats bad projects.

Strike the cancelled projects from the record, eliminate their rows, and reprint the one-page map.  If you have the right number of projects and they’re fully staffed (this is unlikely), execute the projects that made the cut.  If you have too few projects, the next step is to come up with a set of new projects that deliver revenue sooner than the culled projects.  If you still have too many projects (too many people with too many Xs), it’s time to thin the herd again.  Sort the projects by the revenue they will generate over the threshold period plus three years.  The best projects will bubble to the top, and the bad ones will sink to the bottom.

Let the reallocating begin.

Now, delete all the Xs from the spreadsheet so none of the projects are staffed and no one has a project.  Start with the top row (your best project), move left to right, and place an X in the columns until the project is fully staffed.  Allocate the resources to your best project and get after it right now. Because your best project was understaffed, incremental will flow to the project. This will increase the probability you will hit the launch date or even pull it in.

Next, move down one row to your second-best project and repeat the process.  Add Xs left to right until the project is fully staffed.  But this time there’s a constraint – each column can contain only one X.  Because the people are now fully allocated to and actively working on your best project, they cannot work on the second-best project.  With all the Xs in place and your second-best project fully staffed, work the project hard with the reallocated resources.  Pull in the timeline if you can.

Repeat the process project by project until you can no longer fully staff a project.  And here’s where the game gets interesting. Don’t work a project you cannot staff fully.  There.  I said it.  With new product development projects, there is no partial credit. They’re either 100% done or 0% done.  A project that’s 80% done delivers 0% of the revenue.  But it’s worse than that.  Making “progress” on a project that won’t launch because it’s understaffed consumes functional support resources and will slow down your most important projects.  Don’t do that. Don’t run the project. Just don’t.  You’re better off paying the people to stay home so they don’t consume functional resources needed by the more important projects.

Instead of paying the people to stay home, try to add them to the active projects so you can launch those sooner.  In theory, those projects are fully staffed, but old behaviors die hard, and you probably didn’t fully staff the most important projects.  For the people who still don’t have a project (they cannot speed up the projects), train them on the skills/tools they’ll need for the next round of projects.  This will help you do the next projects better and faster.  Or, they could start on more forward-looking projects that don’t consume resources needed by the more urgent projects.

The process to allocate people to the most important projects is the same for resources like infrastructure for reliability testing or product validation.  With the same fully-staff-the-project approach, allocate the infrastructure resources to the most important projects.  Once there is no more infrastructure capacity, don’t run an under-resourced project.  If you run the lesser project, it will consume those precious infrastructure resources and slow down your most important projects.

You likely won’t be able to staff projects such that each person works on a single project.  The concept is more directional than literal.  Working on three projects is better than working on four, and two is better than three.

I did not describe how to estimate the project revenues, how to create new projects that deliver more revenue sooner, or how to create the right mix of projects – short, medium, and long.  But in a first-things-first way, I suggest you start with a singular focus – reallocate resources to your best projects (and, likely, fewer of them), so those projects effectively deliver revenue your company needs.

I think more focus will bring you more effectiveness.

Image credit — Charlie Wales

When your idea is new, it (and you) will be misunderstood.  I urge you to see the misunderstanding as a vote of confidence.  Keep going.

When your position contradicts the mainstream, say it anyway.  They’ll appreciate your honesty and courage if you work at a good company.  If you work at a bad company, they’ll probably try to run you out of town.  Either way, you’ll know what kind of company you’re working for.

Change is difficult when the Status Quo has been successful for a long time.  Success will block your new idea because there’s no need for it.  Working on your new idea pulls resources away from the Status Quo’s initiatives, and the Status Quo will have none of that.  Don’t take its wrath personally.  That’s how the Status Quo goes about its business.

When your new idea is young, it is too fragile to be justified in an ROI sense.  Shelter it from the Accounting Police.

Your new idea isn’t right.  It starts the journey as one thing, and as the journey progresses, it will transform into something better.  This is how it goes with new ideas.

Without a new idea, you’ll do what you did last time. That’s no way to live.

If no one complains, your idea isn’t new.  You missed the mark.

If some complain but none are threatened, it’s not new enough. Try harder.

Image credit – denisben

Supply chains have taken it on the chin, first from COVID-19 and now from tariffs (or the threat of them).  For the second time in several years, we have objective evidence there is more to a supply chain than implementing the lowest-cost way to meet predictable demand. Tariffs have highlighted the cost of an inflexible supply chain because we can quantify the savings from moving parts to countries with lower tariffs.

With tariffs, Lean’s mantra of “make it where you sell it” has sharper teeth.

At the most fundamental level, supply chains are governed by the parts.  Big parts, big factories; small parts, small machines; high part volume, high volume processes; low part volume, low volume processes; specialized coatings on the parts, specialized suppliers; parts with proprietary materials, sole source supplier.  The supply chain is defined by its parts.  And when you try to move the manufacture of parts from one country to another, these part-based constraints are the very thing that creates supply chain inflexibility.  Said another way, if you want to improve a supply chain’s flexibility, you’ve got to start with the parts.  If you want to reduce the tariffs of your supply chain, start with the parts.

All the parts in the supply chain are important but with tariffs, some parts are more important than others.  You can make significant improvements in your supply chain’s tariff signature if you know the handful of parts that will deliver the largest tariff reduction.  For each part within your supply chain calculate

(material cost x volume x tariff percentage)

and sort the product from largest to smallest.  For the top ten parts assess the part-specific constraints that governed the original decision of the supplier and country.  For each part identify a country with lower tariffs and pair it with the part-specific constraints.  You now have a list of the top ten opportunities to reduce the tariff signature, what must change in the design to move to a lower tariff location, and the entitlement savings.  The DFM-based tariff savings for each part is

(part cost x volume x difference in tariff percentage).

Take your top ten list to the product owner and show them the potential savings and ask to meet with the design community so you can explain how each part must change so it can move to a lower tariff country.  And tell them how much the company will save if those constraints are overcome.  This is like classic Design for Manufacturing (DFM) where the part is changed to reduce the cost to make the part, but, instead, the part is changed to reduce the cost of tariffs.

You now have a playbook for the top ten parts, the estimated tariff savings, and the work required to realize those savings.  You don’t have to implement the playbook, but you can.  And you can repeat the process for the next ten most important parts (11-20).  Now you have a playbook for twenty parts and the estimated savings.  You can continue the process as needed and step through the list ten parts at a time.

The process I describe is a good way to reduce the cost of tariffs. But to make a dent in the universe, there’s a much better way.  It’s called Design For Assembly, or DFA, which is all about product simplification through part elimination.  35% reductions in the number of parts are typical.  With DFA, high-tariff parts aren’t changed, they’re eliminated.  But where classic DFA prioritizes eliminating the highest-cost parts, tariff-based DFA prioritizes eliminating parts with the highest tariff costs.  The calculations to prioritize DFA-based tariff reduction are similar to those for DFM, but the savings are far more severe – the entire tariff and the part cost are saved.  The DFA savings are

(part cost x volume x tariff percentage) + (part cost x volume)

Run the calculation for the parts in your supply chain and sort the results from largest to smallest.  Take the list of the top ten to the design community and show them how much they can save if they eliminate the parts.  Tell them they’ll be the Heros of the Company if they pull it off.  Tell them you help them get the tools and training they’ll need.  Repeat for the second group of the ten most important parts (11-20).

DFM and DFA are wildly profitable and with the added savings of tariffs, the savings are beyond wild.  If there was ever a time to do DFM and DFA, it’s is now.

Image credit — Derell Licht

Tariffs.  Economic uncertainty.  Geopolitical turmoil.  There’s no time for elegance.  It’s time for the art of the possible.

Give your sales team a reason to talk to customers.  Create something that your salespeople can talk about with customers.  A mildly modified product offering, a new bundling of existing products, a brochure for an upcoming new product, a price reduction, a program to keep prices as they are even though tariffs are hitting you.  Give them a chance to talk about something new so the customers can buy something (old or new).

Think Least Launchable Unit (LLU). Instead of a platform launch that can take years to develop and commercialize, go the other way.  What’s the minimum novelty you can launch? What will take the least work to launch the smallest chunk of new value?  Whatever that is, launch it now.

Take a Frankensteinian approach. Frankenstein’s monster was a mix and match of what the good doctor had scattered about his lab.  The head was too big, but it was the head he had.  And he stitched onto the neck most crudely with the tools he had at his disposal.  The head was too big, but no one could argue that the monster didn’t have a head.  And, yes, the stitching was ugly, but the head remained firmly attached to the neck.  Not many were fans of the monster, but everyone knew he was novel.  And he was certainly something a sales team could talk about with customers.  How can you combine the head from product A with the body of product B?  How can you quickly stitch them together and sell your new monster?

Less-With-Far-Less. You’ve already exhausted the more-with-more design space.  And there’s no time for the technical work to add more.  It’s time for less.  Pull out some functionality and lots of cost.  Make your machines do less and reduce the price.  Simplify your offering and make things easier for your customers.  Removing, eliminating, and simplifying usually comes with little technical risk.  Turning things down is far easier than turning them up.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised how excited your customers will be when you offer them slightly less functionality for far less money.

These are trying times, but they’re not to be wasted. The pressure we’re all under can open us up to do new work in new ways.  Push the envelope. Propose new offerings that are inelegant but take advantage of the new sense of urgency forced.

Be bold and be fast.

Image credit — Geoff Henson

Building trust takes time.  Tearing it apart does not.

Seeing what is there is easy.  Seeing what is missing is not.

Concentrating is easy for some.  For others, daydreaming is not.

Bringing your whole self to work takes courage.  Pretending does not.

Hearing is easy.  Listening is not.

Trying is subjective.  Doing is not.

Telling the truth is appreciated.  Done unskillfully, it is not.

Singing is easy for some.  For others, not singing is not.

Going fast can be good.  Going too fast cannot.

Hearing what is said is easy.  Hearing what is withheld is not.

Finishing takes a long time.  Quitting should not.

Image credit — Mike Keeling

How many hours of meetings do you sit through each week? Check your calendar over the previous month and write down that number.

If you had control over your calendar, would you rather sit through more meetings or fewer?

If you don’t meet enough and need more meetings, I want to work at your company.

If you want fewer, what will you do to change things?  Here are two simple things you can try:

1. Say no to meetings that have no agenda. Tell them you have a policy to be prepared for all meetings and since you don’t know how to prepare (no agenda!) you’ll sit this one out.
2. Say no to meetings where everyone updates each other. Tell them you’ll read the minutes they won’t write.

Check your calendar over the previous month, add the hours you could have saved if you followed the two rules, and divide by four to convert to a weekly average. Write down that number.

How much time do you spend getting ready for meetings each week? Write down that number.

How much time do you spend recovering from meetings each week?  (Switching cost is real.) Write down that number.

Now let’s focus on thinking.

How many hours do you think each week?  Check your calendar over the previous month, divide by four to convert to a weekly average, and write down that number.

If you had control over your calendar, would you rather think more or less?

If you have too much time to think, I want to work at your company.

If you want to think more, what will you do to change things?  Here are two simple things you can try:

1. Schedule a one-hour meeting with yourself that recurs weekly. Mark the meeting as “out of office.”
2. For the next three weeks, add another recurring meeting with yourself.

And, yes, it’s possible to schedule time to think.

An additional four hours of thinking per week may not sound significant, but it’s probably a 100% increase over your previous weekly average.  That’s a big difference especially since everyone else spends most of their time in meetings.

Use the two rules to say no to meetings and you’ll free up a lot of time.  And with that freed-up time, you can schedule four hours of thinking time per week.

Why not give it a try?  Your career will thank you.

Image credit — Florence Ivy

Before you can make improvements, you must identify improvement opportunities.

Before you can identify improvement opportunities, you must look for them.

Before you can look for improvement opportunities, you must believe improvement is possible.

Before believing improvement is possible, you must admit there’s a need for improvement.

Before you can admit the need for improvement, you must recognize the need for improvement.

Before you can recognize the need for improvement, you must feel dissatisfied with how things are.

Before you can feel dissatisfied with how things are, you must compare how things are for you relative to how things are for others (e.g., competitors, coworkers).

Before you can compare things for yourself relative to others, you must be aware of how things are for others and how they are for you.

Before you can be aware of how things are, you must be calm, curious, and mindful.

Before you can be calm, curious, and mindful, you must be well-rested and well-fed.  And you must feel safe.

What choices do you make to be well-rested? How do you feel about that?

What choices do you make to be well-fed? How do you feel about that?

What choices do you make to feel safe? How do you feel about that?

Image credit — Philip McErlean

Improvement is progress.  Improvement is always measured against a baseline, so the first thing to do is to establish the baseline, the thing you make today, the thing you want to improve.  Create an environment to test what you make today, create the test fixtures, define the inputs, create the measurement systems, and write a formal test protocol.  Now you have what it takes to quantify an improvement objectively.  Test the existing product to define the baseline.  No, you haven’t improved anything, but you’ve done the right first thing.

Improving the right thing to make progress.  If the problem invalidates the business model, stop what you’re doing and solve it right away because you don’t have a business if you don’t solve it. Any other activity isn’t progress, it’s dilution.  Say no to everything else and solve it.  This is how rapid progress is made.  If the customer won’t buy the product if the problem isn’t solved, solve it.  Don’t argue about priorities, don’t use shared resources, don’t try to be efficient.  Be effective.  Do one thing.  Solve it.  This type of discipline reduces time to market.  No surprises here.

Avoiding improvement of the wrong thing to make progress.  For lesser problems, declare them nuisances and permit yourself to solve them later.   Nuisances don’t have to be solved immediately (if at all) so you can double down on the most important problems (speed, speed, speed).  Demoting problems to nuisances is probably the most effective way to accelerate progress.  Deciding what you won’t do frees up resources and emotional bandwidth to make rapid progress on things that matter.

Work the critical path to make progress. Know what work is on the critical path and what is not.  For work on the critical path, add resources.  Pull resources from non-critical path work and add them to the critical path until adding more slows things down.

Eliminate waiting to make progress.  There can be no progress while you wait.  Wait for a tool, no progress.  Wait for a part from a supplier, no progress.  Wait for raw material, no progress.  Wait for a shared resource, no progress.  Buy the right tools and keep them at the workstations to make progress.  Pay the supplier for priority service levels to make progress.  Buy inventory of raw materials to make progress.  Ensure shared resources are wildly underutilized so they’re available to make progress whenever you need to.  Think fire stations, fire trucks, and firefighters.

Help the team make progress. As a leader, jump right in and help the team know what progress looks like.  Praise the crudeness of their prototypes to help them make them cruder (and faster) next time.  Give them permission to make assumptions and use their judgment because that’s where speed comes from.  And when you see “activity” call it by name so they can recognize it for themselves, and teach them how to turn their effort into progress.

Be relentless and respectful to make progress. Apply constant pressure, but make it sustainable and fun.

Image credit — Clint Mason

If you don’t like what happened, now is the time to let it go.

If it already happened, it cannot be undone.  Time travel is not yet possible. Let it go.

If you spend your energy complaining about the past, you won’t have enough for right now.

If you had no control over the outcome, what does it say if you beat yourself up about the outcome?

It’s not just uranium that has a half-life.  Everything does.  And so do you.

When you hold tightly to how things are, you get rope burns.

When you no longer have what you had, you can finally appreciate it for what it was.

An unplanned kick in the pants can help you jumpstart a new S-curve when you see it that way.

If you worry about what will happen, don’t.  It hasn’t happened and likely won’t.

If you spend your energy worrying about the future, you won’t have enough for right now.

If you try to predict the consequences of bad fortune, you can’t.  And it’s the same for good fortune.

Direct linear causality isn’t a thing when it comes to people systems.  Propensity, yes.  Causality, no.

How it will turn out has nothing to do with how you think it will turn out.

Trying to achieve the ideal future state is a waste of time.  There’s no way to know what the Universe thinks is ideal.

The future is uncertain and there’s nothing you can do about it.  You might as well not worry about it.

Who is standing in front of you?  What if you spent all your energy with them right now?  I bet they’d notice.

Who is sitting next to you? What if you treated them like they were the most important thing in your life right now?  I bet they’d remember that experience.

What are you doing right now?  Wouldn’t it be soothing to put all your energy into that task? Wouldn’t it be helpful to leave the rest for another time?  Why not give it a go?

Wouldn’t it be pleasant to put all your energy into doing one thing in a row? Why not try it?

What if you put all your energy into doing the next right thing?  Wouldn’t that eliminate some of your stress?  Why not test it out?

How would it feel to be here now?  Why not give it a try?

Image credit — Bobby Magee

Be bold – the alternative is boring.

Be the first to forgive – it’s like forgiving twice.

Be yourself – you’re the best at that.

Be afraid – and do it anyway.

Be effective – and to hell with efficiency.

Be happy – if that’s what’s inside.

Be authentic – it’s invigorating.

Be energetic – it’s contagious.

Be a listener – that’s where learning comes from.

Be on time – it says you care.

Be early if you can’t be on time – but just a little.

Be courageous – but sparingly.

Be kind – people remember.

Be truthful – that’s how trust is built.

Be a learner – by learning to listen.

Be sad – if that’s what’s inside.

Be a friend – it’s good for them and better for you.

Be nobody – it’s better for everybody, even you.

Image credit — Irene Steeves