Business Practices for Engineers

<p>Back When a Truck Was Just a Truck</p><p>In the first half of the last century, trucks were beautifully simple. We divided them into three categories:</p><p>* Light trucks</p><p>* Medium-duty trucks</p><p>*...

<p>For the most impatient among you, here’s the answer right away:</p><p><p>In the commercial vehicle industry, I consider it fast to bring a new vehicle to market in 4 years.</p></p><p>With the classic approach used in...

<p></p><p>Picture this: You're the leader of an organization that desperately needs to transform. You've identified the problems, you have a vision for the future, and you're ready to make it happen. But here's the...

<p>Agile project management is based on Scrum. </p><p>That's how it all started, so let's introduce Sprint meetings and Scrum boards first.</p><p>Once that works, we can scale up and think about the higher complexity in...

<p>As a product development leader, I regularly attend project review meetings where we discuss the status of important product development projects. In these meetings, project teams typically present two very different...

<p>There are moments in work life that you never forget.</p><p>I experienced one of these moments when we introduced our first Drum Beat in a pilot project.</p><p>The project team sat together in a meeting, planning the...

<p>For many years, I had a metric on my shopfloor board that was probably very unusual. At least I don't know any other manager who worked with this KPI.</p><p>It was the "task completion speed" – the duration until...

<p>There's something strange about vehicle development projects: they span years—yet time is always too short.</p><p>Whether it was a complete redesign of the entire product portfolio or just a minor facelift, the...

<p></p><p>I can still remember it like it was yesterday.</p><p>In 2010, we launched the Mercedes Benz Atego Hybrid. </p><p>The vehicle was a full-fledged Mercedes with mass production quality. It offered 20% fuel...

<p></p><p>A -- B -- C -- D -- this is how the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) designates the sample phases in product development.</p><p>The VDA defines these phases in its recommendation for...

<p>Plans are only perfect until they meet reality. No plan survives contact with the real world.</p><p>Experienced project teams understand this reality and prepare for deviations in advance, enabling quick course...

<p>In this article, I would like to introduce the last important role in the project management team and explain why it makes sense to invest the necessary capacity in this role.</p><p>The Project...

<p>The project manager is responsible for achieving project goals—that much is undisputed. But does this responsibility also extend to ensuring that:</p><p>* A high-quality product is developed?</p><p>* All technical...

<p>* Is your organization still small enough that everyone knows each other?</p><p>* Is your product still so simple that every team member understands it inside and out?</p><p>Then, teamwork is easy to...

<p>In classic project management, the Project Manager is a superhero.</p><p>He is the general responsible person, responsible for everything that happens in the project, including delegating responsibilities and tasks...