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Burndown Charts Don't Work for Hardware

David Paulson - 01/30/24 03:19 AM

In a previous blog post I explained (and hopefully convinced you) that measuring “percent complete” literally causes your projects to take longer.

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Resource Loading - How a Small Error Can Double Your Schedule!😧

David Paulson - 01/6/24 11:23 PM

Would you believe that a 10% increase in the workload on your teams could double the length of a project? 

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Your Favorite Report is Delaying Your Project

David Paulson - 12/6/23 03:15 AM

Most companies are trying hard to achieve predictable end dates.

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Stop the Evil and Nefarious Multitasking!

David Paulson - 11/14/23 09:28 PM

Not that long ago multitasking used to be considered a valuable skill. Thankfully that belief has been proven wrong, but for some reason a lot of...

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Predictable End Dates - One Company's Journey

David Paulson - 10/19/23 01:01 AM

One of the most difficult things about making process improvements is knowing where to start. Doing the wrong thing is a waste of time and money, and...

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10 tips for running a daily standup meeting

Paul DeLong - 04/5/23 07:06 PM

Running a daily standup meeting seems pretty simple right? After all it’s just another meeting. Well not really. The daily stand-up process is...

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Agile principle 1: early and continuous delivery of value

Eric Graves - 01/5/23 06:21 PM

In the next three posts we discuss Agile principles and how to apply the principles in hardware development. In this post we look at delivering...

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8 Types of risk and risk management investment

Eric Graves - 12/5/22 08:57 PM

8 Types of risk 

In order to examine risk exposure and uncertainty in greater detail, let's look at the different types of risks --uncertain events...

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Risk drivers and 5 whys

Eric Graves - 11/5/22 09:58 PM

We begin the analysis phase and look at risk drivers and the 5 Whys technique - a simple and powerful technique for discovering the root of the...

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Risk Mitigation Strategy (Part 2)

Eric Graves - 03/12/19 10:05 PM

What is a risk mitigation strategy?

Mitigating a risk essentially means deliberately doing something to reduce risk exposure - to burn down the...

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Lean vs Agile vs Waterfall

Elyssa Pallai - 03/5/19 06:00 PM

Lean vs. Agile vs. Waterfall Project Management

In a previous post we discussed that there is no doubt project management methods have evolved and...

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Risk Management Process

Eric Graves - 02/26/19 09:00 PM

Risk management has four steps. It is cyclical, and each risk, issue, question, and opportunity is put through the process as quickly as possible....

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Risk Mitigation Strategy

Eric Graves - 02/19/19 05:30 PM

Defining Risk Drivers

Product development is a risky business. So how do you effectively minimize the impact of risks on your project? In short, you...

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Resource Management

Eric Graves - 02/4/19 03:09 PM

This is the fifth part of our series on Lean Project Management. In this post, we look at resource management. 

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Lean Project Management Methods and Principles

Eric Graves - 01/17/19 01:12 PM

This is the second part of our series on Lean Agile Project Management.

In Part 1 we recognized that one of the primary drivers of success in product...

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Lean Project Management

Eric Graves - 01/9/19 06:55 PM

Feeling like you are using the wrong tools to achieve your product development goals?

This is Part 1 of a series of posts on Lean Project Management

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ROI of Risk Management

Eric Graves - 01/1/19 09:47 PM

The Return on Investment in project risk management is high, and therefore worth the effort.

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The Benefits of Kanban and Gantt for Hardware Development

Elyssa Pallai - 11/8/18 04:17 PM

Why is Gantt and Kanban such a killer combination in hardware development for accelerating projects? Some of you may instantly recoil at the mere...

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Lean Agile Project Management (Part 2): Which Lean practices deliver the highest ROI?

Eric Graves - 07/19/18 05:47 PM

Feeling like you are using the wrong tools to achieve your product development goals?

This is Part 2 of a series of posts on Lean product...

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What is Lean Project Management?

Eric Graves - 07/17/18 11:48 AM

Feeling like you are using the wrong tools to achieve your product development goals?

This is Part 1 of a series of posts on Lean Project Management...

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What is Project Risk Management

Eric Graves - 04/3/18 05:45 PM

While on a recent trip to New Zealand to ramp up a new client, I took a little time after work to see some sights. Coincidently, I was also...

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Lean Product Development: Barriers to Adoption

David Paulson - 04/27/17 05:00 PM

I often hear companies use the excuse that their culture is preventing them from adopting Lean product development, or making other positive changes....

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Lean Product Development: Where in the world should you begin?

David Paulson - 04/13/17 05:15 PM

In the previous two blogs I made a compelling case for Lean Product Development being the business opportunity of the century, and then gave an...

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Visual Project Management Software: Create flow and innovate

Elyssa Pallai - 01/12/17 05:00 PM

As engineers we are empowered to create great things - develop innovations that change the world. In order to make these innovations a reality, we...

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Lean and Agile? Yes, it's both in hardware development!

David Paulson - 12/15/16 05:55 PM

Lean and Agile in Hardware Development

There seems to be some confusion about which works best for the hardware development process. This makes...

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Early Learning in Hardware Development

Eric Graves - 12/15/16 04:00 PM

Early Learning in Hardware Development

This series is a comprehensive review of Agile and how to apply Agile to hardware product development.We look...

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Making Hardware Development More Agile

Eric Graves - 12/1/16 06:23 PM

Optimizing Hardware Development to be More Agile

So how do you make hardware development more Agile? In this part, part 5, we examine Agile's 3 and...

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The Top Cause of Project Delays (It's Not What You Think)

Elyssa Pallai - 12/1/16 05:02 PM

Welcome to Playbook’s Three Lean Product Development Links. Why are projects late? We spend a lot of time thinking about this very question at...

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Agile Hardware Development: Agile Principles 4 - 12

Eric Graves - 11/1/16 05:25 PM

We agree. Hardware product development is different than software. So when we apply Agile principles, we need a different approach.

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Is your project behind schedule? This could be why.

Elyssa Pallai - 11/1/16 04:37 PM

At PLAYBOOK we spend a lot of time thinking about how to speed up Lean product development projects. In fact, that’s mostly what we do. We take this...

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Risk Management for Hardware (Part 12): Risk Mitigation Strategy

Eric Graves - 10/18/16 04:15 PM

Making the trade-off between scope, schedule, and cost, and making decisions that maximize the top-level goal of making a profit is at the heart of...

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Prioritizing Hardware Projects at the Program Level

Paul DeLong - 10/12/16 06:21 PM

Prioritizing Projects at the Program Level

Have you ever imagined what it would be like working in a company where you were literally supporting 3 to...

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Tips for Improving Your Hardware Development Process

Elyssa Pallai - 10/4/16 04:55 PM

Welcome to Playbook’s Three Lean Links. Innovating quickly is on the top of everyone's agenda. But streamlining your hardware development process to...

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7 Tips for Improving Your Hardware Development Process

Elyssa Pallai - 09/22/16 07:42 PM

Looking to refine your hardware development process? Here are 7 Lean and Agile principles to refine your process and deliver projects faster...

7...

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What is Lean Product Development

Eric Graves - 09/21/16 03:34 PM

What is Lean Product Development?  The Lean landscape is confusing because there are many flavors of Lean. But here is our definition...

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3 Articles on Innovation and Lean Product Development

Elyssa Pallai - 08/25/16 04:30 PM

Welcome to Playbooks’s three Lean Product Development links. Innovation is on everyone's minds. It's a primary driver of company profit. Here are...

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Objects Impacted and Modular Architecture

Eric Graves - 08/2/16 03:46 PM

Objects Impacted and Modular Architecture

It's critical to capture the objects impacted by a risk in order to understand risk exposure, as well as...

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Free Lean Training

Elyssa Pallai - 07/7/16 05:39 PM

Looking to create flow and improve your delivery timelines? In this post we share free Lean training resources, including our on-demand webinar...

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The Rise of the Robots

Elyssa Pallai - 06/24/16 07:40 PM

This post is a bit off the topic of Lean, but totally on topic for everyone interested in integrated product development. The changes taking place...

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Agile Hardware Development: Playbook's Lean Links

Elyssa Pallai - 06/7/16 04:30 PM

Welcome to Playbook’s Three Lean Product Development Links. Can Agile be applied to hardware development? It can. Here are three Lean links that...

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Visual Project Management Software: Play the game and see what you've been missing!

David Paulson - 06/2/16 06:39 PM

Does this sound familiar? Intuitively you know visual project management software is worth the investment, but how do you effectively communicate the...

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Lean Product Development: Why did we focus on the wrong end of the value chain...?

David Paulson - 04/5/16 06:13 PM

Lean Product Development Value Chain

Manufacturers have known for years that one of the primary tenets of Lean is to identify what the customer...

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Project Risk and Project Objectives

Eric Graves - 03/17/16 05:11 PM

Project Risk and Project Objectives

Evaluating risks starts by defining and understanding a project’s objectives. If there aren’t any objectives,...

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Four Agile Product Development Techniques That DON’T Work for Hardware

Eric Graves - 02/2/16 06:40 PM

At Playbook, creating velocity in product development projects has been our passion for 18 years. As a result, we’ve analyzed Agile and other product...

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The Sweet Spot Between Agile and Waterfall Project Management

Elyssa Pallai - 01/12/16 06:00 PM

What is the Sweet Spot Between Agile and Waterfall

There is no doubt project management methods have evolved and the traditional Phase Gate or...

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