Product Design & Development

Lecture 25
Managing Projects

Project Planning
Project Planning
Coordinating tasks
Estimation of required resources
Estimation of development time
Baseline Project Planning
Initial plan is called the baseline project

plan

Accelerating Projects
Baseline plan can be improved to reduce

execution time

Baseline Project Planning

To Do List
Contract Book
Project Task List
Team Staffing and Organization
Project Schedule
Project Budget
Project Risk Plan

Baseline Project Planning

Contract Book
Between Project Team and Senior
Management
Defines Project plan and results of
concept development
Item
Page
Chapter
Mission Statement

Customer Needs List

1-2

Product Specifications 1-2

Project Plan
Task List

1-5

2,16

Baseline Project Planning

Project Task List
List of project tasks between 50 to 200
Not

all tasks can be listed list as many as

possible

Define tasks under subheadings

Phase

of Concept Development Tasks

Phase of Testing Tasks
Reuse prior knowledge
Tasks

in a phase may be common between

different projects

Estimate Person-Week effort

Not

in terms of calendar days but actual working

time

Baseline Project Planning

Team Staffing and Organization
INDIVIDUALS COMPLETE TASKS !

7 Criteria which determine speed with which a

team will complete development

Less than 10 members
Members volunteer on the team
Members sever from concept development till

product launch
Members assigned are full time
Report directly to Team leader
Functions including marketing, design and
manufacturing present
Located in conversational distance

Baseline Project Planning

Minimum number of people required ?
Total estimated time required to complete project

tasks divided by planned project duration

Estimated task time for Cheetah Project = 354 person-

weeks
Estimated duration of Project = 12 month
Number of people required = 354 / 50 = 7

Allocation Not easy as shown above

A person may not be available full time
Special skill people may be available for a short

duration
Uneven work load during the duration of project

Baseline Project Planning

Project Schedule
Merger of Project Tasks and Project Timelines
Use DSM or PERT Chart for dependencies
Use Gantt Chart for project milestones
Schedule tasks, considering staffing and resources
Adjust timing and milestones
Person

Mont
h

12

Team Lead

100

100

100

100

Mold
Designer

25

25

100

25

Manu Engg.

25

25

50

100

Baseline Project Planning

Project Budget
Mainly associated with salaries
What should not happen

Baseline Project Planning

Project Risk Plan (!)

Baseline Project Planning

Project Risk Plan (General)

Baseline Project Planning

Project Risk Plan (Kodak Example)
Risk

Level

Mitigation Method

Change in Customer
Specs

Moderate

Involve customers in
process of refining
specs

Poor feeding
characteristics of
cartridge

Low

Build early functional

prototype and Test

Delay in mold making Moderate

Reserve 25%
capacity of facility for
the process

Molding problems
requiring remolding

Establish design
rules, involve mold
maker, perform
computer analysis

High

Accelerate Project
Baseline is the first design
Makes assumptions that may be revisited
How to accelerate a project

1.Start the project early

Saving a month at start is as good as saving a month at

the end
Meeting to approve project plan All stake holders not
available

(Costs Time) GET IT DONE ! This is what good leads do.

2.Manage project scope

Additional features can be added later (Freeze Design

and get rid of Feature Creep)

3.Facilitate exchange of essential information

Place team together give them means to communicate

Accelerate Project Decrease Time

4.Complete Tasks on Critical Path quickly
5.Aggregate Safety Time
Each task duration has a buffer called safety time
Allocated for unpredictable delays
Waiting for approval, information, more difficult than
anticipated
Remove safety time from each task and pool at the

end

Called Project Buffer

Accelerate Project Decrease Time

Why place it at the end ?
Not all tasks will experience delay

Advantage
Can reduce length of critical path as project buffer
can be half of the total delay

Accelerate Project Decrease Time

6.Eliminate Critical path Tasks if possible
Remember the task is not critical the path is !

7.Eliminate Delays for critical path resources

Tasks on critical path are VIPs should not be delayed
because of non-availability of resources
8.Pipeline large tasks
Breakup a large task into smaller tasks
Finding and qualifying vendors can delay production rampup
Instead of waiting for the inventory to be complete, ask
vendor of a part to deliver as soon as the vendor is
discovered

9.Outsource Tasks
Constraint of resources may require allocation of tasks
to other companies

Accelerate Project Complete Tasks Quickly

1.Perform Iterations Quickly
Exchange information frequently
Share the display of people working together QA,

Developer

2.Decouple tasks to avoid iterations (if possible)

Not necessarily possible
3.Consider Set of Solutions
Instead of using a value use range of values