Shipulski On Design

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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 […]

Efficient – How do we do more projects with fewer people? Effective – Let’s choose the right project. Would you rather do more projects that miss the mark or fewer that excite the customer? Efficient – How do we finish the project faster? Effective – Let’s fully staff the project. Would you rather burn out […]

Efficiency is a simple measurement – output divided by resources needed to achieve it. How much did you get done and how many people did you need to do it? What was the return on the investment? How much money did you make relative to how much you had to invest? We have efficiency measurements […]

We live in a resource constrained world where there’s always more work than time.  Resources are always tighter than tight and tough choices must be made. The first choice is to figure out what change you want to make in the world. How do you want put a dent in the universe? What injustice do […]

There is a dearth of engineering leadership capability, and it negatively impacts the company’s bottom line every day.  And it’s prevalent in all levels of the engineering organization. Entry-level engineers feel the lack of engineering leadership capability as soon as they arrive.  They want to know how to get things done, how to address a […]

Slow down to go fast. Progress over activity. Effectiveness before efficiency. Finish at the expense of starting. Location is more important than destination. See the system as it could be, not how it should be. Brown field designs are real; green field designs are not. What could go right is more important than what could […]

Companies make progress through projects. Projects have objectives that are defined by the company’s growth or improvement objectives. Projects have quantifiable goals that are, hopefully, time-bound. Projects require resources, and those resources limit the number of projects that are completed. Projects are run with the resources allocated, not with the resources we want to allocate. […]

Don’t tell me what I can do; tell me what I cannot do, so everything else is available to me. It’s faster if you give me smart, hardworking people with little experience.  I won’t have to re-teach them, and we can get started right away. Tell me what you want done, but not how to […]

996 is all the rage.  You work 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week.  Startups are doing it.  Might non-startups start doing it? Productivity is important and competition is severe.  And I’m all for working hard, but I don’t think the 996 schedule is the most effective way to achieve productivity goals, at […]

To do new things, you’ve got to stop old things. If you don’t stop old things, you can’t start new things. Resources limit the work that can be done. If you have more work than resources, you won’t be able to complete everything. Spread your resources across fewer projects, and you’ll accomplish more. If you […]

Good new product development projects deliver value to customers.  Bad ones create value for your company, not for customers.  Can you discern between custom value and company value?  What do you do when there’s an abundance of company value and a shortfall of customer value?  Do you run the project anyway or pull the emergency […]