Pre-Conference Workshop
A
Workshop A - 8:30am-12:00pm (morning half day)
Metrics Primer:
Using Metrics to Improve Engineering Productivity
Instructor: Bob Neel, Product Development Process Consulting
Everyone knows how to use
process-feedback metrics to optimize a manufacturing process or piece of
equipment. But how do you measure and optimize "fuzzy" R&D processes?
This will be a practical, how-to
seminar on using metrics to increase engineering productivity. We will
begin with the basic tenet: You can’t control what you can’t measure
- and you can’t improve what you can’t control! The course includes
lecture, a case-study workshop, group discussion, and numerous examples.
- Factors that drive process change
- The importance and power of metrics
- Methods for collecting and analyzing
- Difficulties in measuring R&D
- Making knowledge-worker metrics easy
- How much or how little to collect
- Overcoming "Big Brother" fears
- Things you should measure & not
measure
- The derived benefits: using what you
learn
- The free benefits & real costs
- Avoiding unintended consequences
- Templates and exercises based on case
studies
- Examples of product development
metrics
- Getting started
Takeaways:
- Ability to select "good" (drive
desired results) metrics
- Data collection and analyzation
methods
- Ability to discern what data and how
much data to collect
- Using data to drive decisions
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