Make Quick Money Online Free - 7 Steps to Improve RandD Throughput by Working on Fewer Projects

What do you do, when a good opportunity surfaces that requires product development resources that are already committed to other things?

" We should be able to figure out how to get it all done, " "With all the people and money we sync into RandD. The sooner we'll finish, at least the sooner we start, " "Since we're always late. It will never finish, "If you don't at least put some resource on it to get started. Do any of these voices sound familiar?

You may just get back the answers you wanted regardless of feasibility, " Or worse yet. Maybe we can pull this off, " "If everything goes well. That shouldn't hurt too much, " "If we pull a little bit of resource from here and there. " "Let's think positive. More often than not they want to "do it for the good of the company, however. Sometimes engineering may be obstinate because of history and personalities. How does engineering react?

It doesn't take much for the dominoes to start falling. You've ensured that you'll miss deadlines on other things you are working on too; a typical result is that not only don't you make the deadlines on the new opportunity. Your projects may already have been hurting by virtue of not being staffed for success. Siphoned resources off to work on an internal improvement or already started with a stretch plan during annual planning, maybe you got caught with unexpected customer support issues. It's probably not the first time you've raided your other development projects.

They always seem to be counting on executing better than their track record suggests their capability will allow. They put too much in the pipeline and hope for the best, as a result. Most firms don't manage their capacity as though it is a scarce set of resources that they are trying to maximize the benefit of. This is it, chronic issue that pervades companies that constantly have challenges with timely product development execution, if there is an "80/20 rule". What do you do when you are going to exceed it? Are you confident you really know what your capacity is?

What are some of the symptoms?

O Engineering release commitments to initial plans are rarely made

O Release dates seem to slide frequently despite re-plans

O Sales may even keep their own "set of books" about release dates to buffer customers from RandD's inability to execute

O Re-prioritizing typically means that efforts continue at reduced rates rather than stopped

O The "go-to guys" in engineering are obviously multitasking at unproductive levels - but it seems there's no other choice

Think about how to get the most you can out of the RandD investment over time, instead of thinking about how to get more out of RandD right now. It is "thinking" about the challenge differently, perhaps the most difficult challenge is not one of "doing" anything differently. Consider a more holistic approach, while there are different ways to alleviate the individual symptoms above.

Once you internalize that throughput will increase when you staff projects for success - instead of by working on as many things as you can - you will start to make different choices about your projects and the resources you apply to them.

Now what?

Resources may just be captured by a number of people with a particular skill set instead of as named individuals, for example. A key here is to keep the level of detail at an abstract enough level so it is manageable. Not vice versa), you may eventually want tools beyond MS Excel to do this but I'd urge you to start by leveraging what you have and only invest in more sophisticated tools when you know what business process methodology works (the process should drive the tools, depending on how large and complex your project portfolio and organization are. ) in a time-phased manner (typically monthly or quarterly snapshots to some point where visibility stops in the future). Vacations etc, training, make sure that all consumers of RandD resources are understood (including infrastructure projects. 1.

Accept that as upside, if your capability has gotten better. This is especially true if there are interdependencies like resources rolling off or new hires. Use the realistic ones based on your demonstrated capability, don't use the optimistic projections, when you are planning the high priority projects. 2.

Just not enough to make your next project work, you probably still have available resources in some disciplines. You've reached your internal capacity. Draw a line there, when you no longer have all the resources you need for the next one. Then take the next one and do the same and so on. Take the most important project and staff it for success through its life-cycle (or your planning horizon). Get good at prioritizing. 3.

Draw the line since you can't fully resource the next project, when you've got the portfolio looking as optimal as you can make it. Some of these tradeoffs will typically allow you to "move the line down" (get more done) and achieve a better load balancing of your resources. Not to religiously stick to your initial take on priorities, remember that the goal is to maximize the value of your entire portfolio, above all else. Some of these tradeoffs tend to increase the consumption of management or other resources which needs to be taken into account. Or partnering to leverage other resources (a way of adding additional resources), buying some pieces rather than doing it yourself, 'de-scoping' projects to alleviate critical resource bottlenecks, start to juggle resources in your plan so you can accomplish more of the list by delaying things higher on the list (reordering the priorities), you'll be disappointed at how few things are above the line. Start to look at ways of getting more done, after your internal capacity is understood. 4.

Understand why that is and whether it's temporary or a trend, if you have excess capacity in some disciplines, also. You want to avoid sinking much investment into things that may not be feasible or you are uncertain of. Be strategic about it, if you do partially staff below the line items. This is where strong leadership is needed because in effect you are telling someone "no" or "maybe" to something that used to be an automatic "yes". You want to have flexibility about when and how to accomplish those projects, at the very least. Making business commitments about these "below the line" projects is a bad idea. There are some resources available and they are undoubtedly the projects are important to someone. You may still want to work on "below the line" items but do it with caution. 5.

By all means do so and then catch up in short order with a rebalanced portfolio, if you need to make some instant judgments to deal with an urgent need. Strong leadership is needed, again. Don't delude yourself into squeezing it in. High priority item then you need to prioritize it in the context of the portfolio and resource constraints and redraw the line, if you are hit by a new. 6.

This should be a primary task of theirs, if you have a governance group that makes business judgments in overseeing the portfolio of work. This should be done at least quarterly with a rolling forecast. The resource capacity and priority list should be revisited and updated regularly with the time-phased resource estimates continually refined. 7.

The net of improved throughput is improved business. It can be a challenge going through this the first time so get help if you need it. The result of this sort of disciplined approach is that over time your RandD resources will earn credibility by meeting more of their commitments and accomplish much more for the business by focusing on the most important things and getting them done as quickly as their current capability allows.

Outsourcing or process adjustments, training, you can deal with these bottlenecks over time through some combination of hiring. You may get a new strategic view of what's holding your throughput back. There are other benefits to this sort of process.

Set of initiatives you may choose to undertake, though perhaps important, treat efforts in this direction as a separate. Undoubtedly you can also improve your product development people and process capability to enable you to get more done more quickly at the same resource level.

It can be painful but will almost always result in a better business outcome. Take the effort to re-prioritize. Human and organizational nature often drive us to the path of least resistance which is just to say yes since if there's pain it won't be felt until much later. Think about the potential risks you're adding throughout your portfolio, next time the temptation is there to just spread your RandD resources thinner.

. Copyright Product Development Advantage Group 2007.