Your Portfolio Management Process is Broken

Your PPM Process is Broken: The Fatal Flaw in Measuring

Engineering Progress

Chad JacksonFounder and President

Engineering’s Interests in PPM• Engineering

organizations are more resource constrained than every before

• Affects organizational performance but also individual’s quality of life

• PPM offers a means to ‘right size’ the amount and scope of development projects

engineering-matters.com… published by…

Slide #2

Recent Research Confirms


Slide #3

Recent Research Confirms


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Two Project Sets to Assess in PPM

• A key concept is the assessment of new and ongoing projects against objective criteria

• Compare and contrast new and ongoing projects against each other

• Ongoing projects may be killed in an effort to reapply resources

Slide #5engineering-matters.com… published by…

There is something wrong with how

progress in engineering development projects is

assessed today

A Quick Story to Illustrate…


The visual fidelity of models and simulation can provide a false

sense of progress in engineering

projects.

Two Sets of Development Activities

Engineering a Product• Activities to explore iterations

that impact a product’s form, fit and function

• The purpose is to gain enough understand of the trade-offs in these options to make design decisions

Documenting a Product• Activities to create the

deliverables unambiguously define the product

• The purpose is to provide a definition to downstream roles such that they can manufacture the product


“There are roughly over 20,000 decisions we have to make before we

reach production with a new car program”

General Motors via Chuck GrindstaffSiemens PLM Connections Event, Las Vegas NV, May 2nd 2011

04/08/2023

Lean Principles Applied to Design

• Set Based Design– Don’t commit to one

design choice until you must

– Mature both options as long as possible while you learn and gain knowledge

– Only make the decision at the last second when you have as much knowledge as possible


04/08/2023

Two Competing Projects• Project #1

– Exploring 13 iterations

– Conducted 15 simulations

– Performed 20 tests– Completed 20% of

design decisions– Completed 17% of

3D models– Completed 15% of

engineering drawings

• Project #2– Exploring 2

iterations– Conducted 3

simulations– Performed 1 tests– Completed 65% of

design decisions– Completed 75% of

3D models– Completed 55% of

engineering drawings


Slide #9

04/08/2023

What to Do? Leverage the V Model


Slide #10

Instrument left side of the v-model with metrics that measure not only deliverable

based progress but also knowledge attainment, decision completion and decision confidence.

Instrument right side of the v-model with metrics that measure verification and validation of the decisions made on the left side of the v-

model.

04/08/2023

Summary and Takeaways• Deliverable progression is a

flawed approach to measuring engineering progress

• Instrument the left side of your engineering v model with metrics that track knowledge attainment, decision completion and decision confidence

• Instrument the right side of your engineering v model with verification and validation metrics in terms of tests completion and test confidence


Your Portfolio Management Process is Broken

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