Quality during Design

We're on our 3rd episode in our series about generating ideas with our team toward action. The previous two episodes were all about idea generation. 

We’re now at the point where we have many ideas and no next steps. 

Let's group and explore our ideas so we can move toward action. We explore these Quality Tools and how to use them after a brainstorming or other idea-generating team activity: 

• Affinity Diagram team sorting method
• Fishbone
• Tree Diagrams

Visit the podcast blog for more links and best practices.

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

This episode is part of our interview series, “A Chat with Cross Functional Experts". Our focus is speaking with people that are typically part of a cross-functional team for new product development. We discuss their viewpoints and perspectives regarding new products, the values they bring to new product development, and how they're involved and work with product design engineering teammates. 

Emily Haidemenos joins us to talk about brainstorming for product development. She hosted a workshop at a conference about this topic titled, "Brainstorming: The Solution to Structured Problem Solving”. We welcome her to the show to share some of her insights and stories of success.  

Emily has a Master's Degree in Design and Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.  After initially working as a Design Engineer Emily left and moved into a  New Product Development Quality Engineering  position.  In this  role, she worked with multiple cross-functional engineering teams to ensure the effectiveness of quality systems while earning her Six Sigma Black Belt certification.  Now as a Chief Engineer for next generation high voltage automotive products, she aims to grow and develop a team of technically competent individuals who realize their maximum potential. 

We talk about:

• Common pitfalls of brainstorming from a perspective of taking defensive action against those pitfalls.  
• We go over the basic steps of brainstorming, but then circle back to the planning phase. There’s a lot we can do in the planning phases, and Emily shares specifics about planning for brainstorming so we can get the most out of it, including setting up those defenses. 
• Best practices for leading a brainstorming session.
• Successes she’s had with it, and what her team thinks about it. 

Visit the podcast blog for links to Emily's recommendations. 

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

Sometimes we need to gather with our team and come up with some ideas. Whether we’re looking for new product ideas, trying to discover possible solutions, or need to improve a service, gathering a team to come up with ideas is common.

What are some of the ways we approach this activity?

We talk about systematic and structured methods and new approaches to brainstorming.

Doing the same, old thing doesn't lead to new thinking and can leave us with stale ideas. We can try something new to keep things fresh.

Visit the podcast blog for links to other resources and related podcast episodes.

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

As engineers, we need to write reports all the time.

Are ours getting returned by reviewers frequently?
Or are we not getting any feedback and are not sure when our report is 'done'?

We explore the spirits of technical writing past, present, and future. We explore how and why they help us to write for ALL of our audiences.

Visit the podcast blog for excerpts.

Other Quality during Design podcast episodes you might like:

About Using Slide Decks for Technical Design Reviews

QDD Book Cast

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

What are the gifts others bring to new product development?

It takes intentional actions and acknowledgement to understand how to bring design inputs into our designs from other people.

We consider project teams like a neighborhood and how this frame of mind can help our designs.

Visit the podcast blog. 

Other Quality during Design podcast episodes you might like:

The DFE Part of DFX (Design For Environment and eXcellence)

How to Self-Advocate for More Customer Face Time

Product Design from a Marketing Viewpoint, with Laura Krick (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

During product development, we're consistently looking for ways to learn more about the product in order to make design decisions. Some of that comes from test.

What do we do when our test results are...surprising?

We talk about some next steps I typically take when tasked with surprises: revisiting the purpose, understanding failure modes at test vs. what we expected (requirements and FMEA), finding a root cause (with the help of FMEA), and deciding what to do next.

Visit the podcast blog.

Other Quality during Design podcast episodes you might like:

How to Handle Competing Failure Modes

Remaking Risk-Based Decisions: Allowing Ourselves to Change our Minds.

5 Aspects of Good Reliability Goals and Requirements

The Way We Test Matters

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

We have a reliability target for our system. But we're not meeting it.

To avoid this scenario, what is something we can do in early development?  

When we're figuring out our concept, we can better learn about our options. We can work with Reliability Engineers to understand what we know, the risk in what we don't know, and to prioritize reliability of the modules to be able to meet the reliability of our whole system.

We talk about using reliability allocation to help us choose reliability goals for modules of our product design. 

There is much more on the podcast blog: graphics, lists, and extra links.  Be sure to visit it at the website!

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

New product development projects are really exciting at the start. Even though we know very little about what the final product is going to look like, we can still use a quick graphical tool to help us direct our engineering attention.

We talk about ways to use a very simple System Architecture Diagram to help us investigate what is new, different, or has been a problem in the past. We also discuss ways we can continue to iterate on it throughout development to help us communicate and make decisions.

Visit the podcast blog, here.

Other Quality during Design podcast episodes you might like:

5 Options to Manage Risks during Product Engineering

What do we do with FMEA early in design concept?

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

We can find Quality at the back-end of product creation, where it's used for compliance.  We want to pick up some of it and move it to the front-end, where design decisions are happening. It's there that we can yield it like a tool to work with our cross-functional team, to help us with doing the engineering work that's important for great designs.

We explore why Quality can help us PRUNE the development process just by the nature of how it's used.
And we highlight the 3 areas that we focus on in Quality during Design: risk-based decisions, quality and reliability engineering partnership, and the user's process.

Visit the podcast blog for a transcript and more links.

Other Quality during Design podcast episodes you might like:

Quality as a Strategic Asset vs. Quality as a Control

 More about the PRUNE strategy:

Quality during Design Framework: PRUNE - Quality During Design

 The driving forces behind Quality during Design:

First time here? - Quality During Design

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.

Where do we sometimes need to look for inspiration?  Books!

We talk about 11 books in 5 different topics that are useful for different perspectives on engineering and design topics.

And I tell you what I'm most looking forward to reading next.

What book recommendations do you have for me?

Find a link to the book list on the podcast blog. 

Send us a message

Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful. 

Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours. 

Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA. "Great for fans of Tony Fadell’s Build, David H. DeWolf and Jessica S. Hall’s The Product Mindset."-BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)

Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn. 

Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.