Balancing Reliability with Program Goals During Product Development

A common challenge confronting product development teams is addressing the balance of demands between product requirements and the allotted program resources. Product specifications frequently specify time to market, manufacturing cost, integration of new technology, reliability targets, and program budget as critical goal objectives. All of these factors compete for resources through program progression. When the competition among goals intensifies, reliability often ends up being faced with the most significant compromise. These compromises take the form of delayed or cancelled testing, design modifications after reliability validation, or the overriding of phase gate requirements. One driving factor in this imbalance is the long lead time for a measurable return on investment for reliability activities. This poses a significant disadvantage in budgeting and scheduling negotiations for reliability. Goals such as time to market and cost can be measured throughout the program and product technological features can be defined mid program. Reliability is often left with little quantitative metrics to support resource requests until after release because of missed testing, poorly integrated test results, or easily overridden reliability phase gates. Once the product is in the field there is rarely an incentive tied to reliability performance because issues become evident long after initial release. At this point in time the original team has often disbanded and a new group such as the continuous or manufacturing engineering group has taken ownership of the product. These program dynamics result in the development of a product that rarely represents the goal balance specified in the product specifications document. The consequences of this loss of goal translation directly affect the business and product line owners but not the development team. This is a significant disconnect. A different methodology is required to ensure that the team's actions continually navigate the product development toward the goal balance established by the organization supporting the high-level business goals. Driving a shared ownership of reliability deliverables and new metrics will increase the awareness of reliability Return on Investment (ROI) in the management decision arena during product development. These ROI factors are critical for the success of releasing a product that has reliability parameters matching the original product specifications. Each team member must own all the goals outlined in the product specification document. This differs from selecting individual product goals such as time to market or product features and can be accomplished with the “bounding” methodology. Bounding ensures that all the product goals influence program activities continuously. This is accomplished by continuously measuring ROI for invested activities and keeping that metric visible to the entire team. Roles maintain alignment with business goals throughout the program with these improved project management practices.