To effectively design and provide solutions for clients, there are a number of different factors you must consider. Items such as a good design process, scope, resource allocation, time management, and scope creep are just a few of the things we must juggle as product design engineers at EFP’s Center of Excellence.
Brainstorming Process
If you have any hope of making it to the finish line on time for your projects, it is imperative to start off any design work with a good design process. Free-flowing brainstorming sessions, established forms of communication, organization, and strong definitions of what you want can set you and your design endeavors off to a great start.
While the process can look very different for different people, never underestimate the power of brainstorming. Creating the time and space for yourself and other colleagues to throw out ideas (free of judgement) allows true creativity to spawn and sets the foundation for innovative projects. Skipping or rushing this segment increases the chances of scope creep down the line and/or causes projects to fall short.
Establish Forms of Communication
Now that ideas have been laid out, it’s time to establish forms of communication for the project. Factors such as whether the team works in the same location, consists of multiple departments, is hybrid/remote, works with a customer/third party, and so on, will naturally dictate the used form of communication. However, take time to consider the following: how productive the team is during meetings, if you’re working with naturally collaborative people or a team full of introverts, or if the team is more visual or auditory. There are free personality tests and exercises online that help establish how your team might best work together (True Colours and Myers-Briggs are my personal favorites), but the method of figuring this out is less important than the effort put in. By investing time into making your team work together, you are sure to see dividends.
Communication often feels like one of the most trivial aspects of work, but when trying to convey a design idea, or any other piece of information, it is easy to run into a pitfall if everyone is not on the same page. For that reason, defining what you want in detail is important, and doing so in a way that’s conducive to everyone helps mitigate issues and confusion down the line.
Give Direction & Delegate Responsibility
You’ve brainstormed ideas and know how you are going to communicate, but now the following questions are at hand:
Weekly meetings or memos might be your first answer, but if you take the time to analyze what aspects are effective and what could be changed, you’ll find the team to be more cohesive in return. If weekly meetings are the way to go, make them segmented with clear goals on what needs updating and who needs to do it.
While it takes more time on the front-end, my preferred way to keep things organized is a Gantt chart. Specifically intended for project management, this tool allows you to see all available tasks, which steps rely on another, and how much time is needed person by person or department by department. If things get roadblocked or a task takes more time than expected, you have a birds-eye view of what happened and how the team got there. Not only does this help everyone easily pivot, but it can also be useful to look back on when estimating time and resources for a new project.
Define Your Scope
Once you and your team have nailed what your design process is, you can finally get into the meat of your project. The first step is to define your scope. This is the process of taking your research, brainstorming, and any perceived constraints into account and finalize what the end-goal design, process, or service looks like.
Note: Having a well-defined scope that explains precisely what you want can deviate nice-to-haves from requirements and can dictate objectives and assignments in a timeline that will save the team time, money, and morale.
Allocate Resources
Once you know exactly what you want and how you’re going to get there, you can begin to allocate resources for the project. Variables like raw materials, budget, and an employee’s time to finish their tasks should all have a framework so that the project reaches its intended conclusion. Having an estimate of how much of your resources are committed to the project also helps analyze the viability of the project itself.
Examples of Project Projection:
Manage Your Time
You can further keep a project efficient and on track by honing in on time management. A simple way to do this, especially early on, is to have the team meet, pick tasks for the week, and estimate how much time it will take them to complete that task. Even if something doesn’t get finished in an anticipated amount of time, this still builds data that can later be used to better estimate future tasks, while having the added benefit of letting the team feel more involved and accountable.
One way we practice time management at the EFP Center of Excellence is by running thermal simulations of new designs that are a work in progress. Instead of rushing into chamber tests that could take days or even a week, we spend a few hours running different configurations via simulation and get preliminary data that helps push us in the right direction.
Control Your Scope Creep
When finalizing the project, it is important not to allow scope creep to get out of control. While sometimes hard to avoid entirely, rampant scope creep can cost the project time, money, and team morale. Further, if it goes unchecked, the result you end up with can easily look completely different than the goal you set out for in the first place.
Just how there’s no one right way to work, there’s no one right way to design. Mixing something inherently creative and adding structure to it is going to be tricky. The key details to remember are to set yourself up for success, lay a good foundation, and set a solid framework that you and your team can look back on and learn from.
Written by Alexander Noreiga, Product Design Engineer.
Alexander began his career as a contracted design engineer for medical technology before moving into automotives and later on industrial thermal products. He has helped design products for NASA, Tesla, and the U.S. military. Alexander now resides in EFP’s Cold Chain Laboratory Center of Excellence as a Product Design Engineer. Here he assists in lab testing, runs simulation software, and designs innovative products and solutions for EFP’s customers.
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