The joys of having a non technical manager.

The FAA has remarkably little to do with design issues. A manufacturer tells them how they intend to meet FAA requirements and as long as they do (follow documented process) what they say they will, that's fine by the FAA.

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.

The "get it right the first time" sounds very much like the "zero defect" programs of the early 1970's. They didn't quite work in the

1970's and are still with us today. The idea is to improve quality by reducing mistakes. The problem is that the victims of such programs spend their time minimizing their mistakes, instead of maximizing their successes. Fear of making a mistake sets in rather quickly, which seems to be exactly what your new manager is practicing. The next stage is finger pointing, where nobody wants to accept responsibility for a mistake. I've attended meetings where the assignment of the blame took precidence over fixing the problem.

Methinks you might be headed for trouble if this is your new managers doctrine. I don't have any brilliant suggestions on how to convince the manager that his approach is wrong. The best I can offer is that he should consider the possible effects of his policies dragged to its logical extreme. If every little problem results in excessive criticism, then people are just not going to report problems. (I've also seen that happen). The result is that he'll get reports from his staff indicating that everything is just wonderful, when nothing is working. It's so much easier to lie and fix the problems quietly, than to admit that there's a problem, and incurr the wrath of this manager. Such over-reaction might also cause designers to refuse to "take ownership" or responsibility for their decisions, resulting the previously mentioned blame game. If someone coming to this manager for help with a problem also gets blamed for the problem, then it's highly likely that nobody will ask for help. This manager is headed for "isolation".

The managers production background is also interesting. Production and QA people are usually involved in Zero Defect or Six Sigma programs in order to improve quality. A questions whether these programs can effectively be applied to development, where they tend to stifle creative solutions and promote excessive paperwork.

As for the necessity of doing prototypes, I'm undecided. It's been 20 years since I've done a major project. We tried it both ways, but never reached a decision. I favored build fast and furious, and found myself spending my time fixing problems. Others favored a more careful, step by step, carefully calculated approach, which tended to extend the project duration, but resulted in much less troubleshooting. Of course, the longer the duration, the more oportunity for marketing to change the specifications. With todays short product cycles, prototyping and even thorough testing of the final product can becomes luxuries. When there are two or three generations of new products in development at any given time, nobody will be interested in fixing the "old" products.

Gotta run.... good luck.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Scratch the author of that article who proclaims: "...and an almost-certain death at hundreds of miles per hour"

Terminal velocity is about 55 meters/sec (125 mph), not hundreds of mph.

One can drop about twice as fast with aerodynamic clothing and positioning, but I suspect this skydiver was doing everything possible to be aerodynamicly inefficient.

Landed in a blackberry bush. Ouch... That can hurt.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

When I learned to skydive about 20 or so years ago, we were required to take five static-line jumps before we were allowed to go into free fall and pull our own ripcord.

Aparently, nowadays, they just do a tandem jump, which I don't really consider skydiving.

Cheers! Rich

I once had a great manager; he really knew his stuff and we all got along fine - (me, an engineer, and three other techs). One day, he called a meeting and said that he was giving his notice because somebody else hired him.

The company hired some complete weenie who didn't know his elbow from a hole in the ground. I got myself fired by coming in hung-over all the time; I got another job at another company much closer to home; while I was working there, I ran into two people (a tech and an engineer) who were my co-workers under Rick. When the new guy came on, he was such a lousy manager that they had quit. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

[snip]

Reminds me of Motorola's attempt in the late '60's. They instituted the "PRIDE" program: [P]ersonal [R]esponsibility [I]n [D]aily [E]ffort

Little oval brass pins with raised blue lettering, to be attached to your ID badge.

Within days we had converted them all to read "BRIBE":

[B]etter [R]aises [I]nspire [B]etter [E]ffort

Needless to say the program died a swift death ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
       
    All that is necessary for the triumph of evil
            is that good men do nothing. 
                  -Edmund Burke

Cute. There have been other variations on the same theme. They all attempt to cure QA problems by moving both the responsibility and the work towards the front end, which in this case is product design. I consider ISO 9000 to be more of the same, but that's considered politically incorrect. Of course, none of these programs compensate the the designers for the additional work load or responsibility.

Granger Associates had an interesting incentive plan. They passed out the managers project completion bonus near the middle of a project. They were fairly substantial bonuses. However, if the project failed to meet the deadline, the managers were told to not bother coming to work. One side effect of this was that the project managers were VERY defensive of any changes by marketing, which was really nice. I kinda like the way it worked, but it required a fat budget and highly motivated managers, both of which tend to be in short supply these daze.

Several companies I worked for had variations on a quality incentive plan. If something screwed up in QA or was returned en-masse by the customers, everyone got sentenced to overtime to fix the problem. I do mean everyone, which included techs, engineers, managers, VP's, and in some cases office staff. I vividly recall one ruined vacation, where we furiously reworked a mess of radios that deemed unsuitable for shipment. The only fun I had was teaching the panic stricken sales guys how to solder. After a few such damage control exercises, the incentive to get it right the first time and prevent others from screwing up, was deemed standard practice.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Heh.

Back when I was working for Honeywell Information Systems in Los Angeles, the company instituted a bounty program for employee- submitted suggestions or ideas or prototypes which reduced expenses and increased productivity.

Documented savings over a certain amount earned the employee a cash (or equivalent) bonus, based on a percentage of the amount saved. For smaller savings you'd get some company-branded merchandise of some sort, and just for submitting a suggestion you'd get a coffee mug emblazoned with the name of the savings program.

The name? [C]ost [R]eduction [A]wards [P]rogram.

I'll leave you to deduce what we called the coffee cups. Given the quality of the company-brewed coffee it wasn't all that inappropriate.

I've never been able to figure out what the corporate bureaucrats who came up with the whole idea were smoking, drinking, popping, or shooting into their veins. Whatever it was, I don't want any :-)

--
Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
  I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
     boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Ummm... no.

Every software revision and bug is a measure of your total incompetence. Get it right first time! It's what you're being paid for you moron! Time is money! etc etc etc

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

The most productive R&D dept I ever worked in ran as a kind of 'skunk works'. The owner of the company had R&D as his pet dept. He wanted something, he came to us and asked for it. We did it - no looking over the shoulder, no major budget constraints, very little accountancy paperwork (it all went over his desk). Just Do It ASAP was his philosophy.

Later he got in some 'real managers' and the company went down the tubes within 2 years.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

...and "Six Sigma", "Quality is Free", and any number of other ridiculous annual programs.

IME, they sit around inventing metrics they can meet. With an arbitrarily high denominator the defect "rate" can be arbitrarily low.

As have I. "Ok, it's *MY* fault. Now that we have that out of the way, let's fix it."

Yep, because everyone will walk.

No one has the budget to fix old products. If it sorta works...

--
Keith

But not in this case:

Dave

You need to get one of those smaller .45 caliber semi-auto pistols and keep it in an ankle holster under your pants. Next time that f*ck stain comes up and starts verbally abusing you, you just whip out your .45, bitch slap him upside the head with it, and scream "If I hear one more derogatory comment outta your worthless ass I am gonna use this gun to blow that crap you use for brains all over the walls in here!!!". Then stick the barrel in his mouth and make him beg you like a little bitch not to kill him.

That should end any personality conflicts you may have with this guy. Dave

Must be why setup boxes (sat-tv, pvrs etc) work like crap. Firmware update.. forget that.. ;)

Now if any new setup box shall be bought. I will demand som sort of guarantee that firmware will be fixed. Or they can stuff their boxes. (the alternate solution is a HTPC that will allow you to workaround bugs)

Yikes. It comes back to me now. The zero defects program instigated by the US military was fashionable in the 1970's. The six sigma program that followed in the 1980's was driven by the military as well. It seem several management fads were driven by non-playing captain military consultant types. Currently it seems to be "Mission, Vision, and Goals"; but it is fading now. It was something else in the 1990's, does anyone recall? Any one watching the current management fads coming out of school for the past decade.

The side effect of it ending your employment and landing you in jail must also be considered.

Assasination is always a worthwhile option....

If you don't like your job, quit.

John

I have had bad managers, and good mangers, but only one great manager.

I had just come off one of the worst experiences in my life, but had sent his company my resume anyway because it was in the same industry (toll roads) and was in the local area. I interviewed with him and several others, and basically did a "how I can do the job' interview with them. I then got an offer, refused it, got another one, refused it, and then got a third offer. Since I didn't have anything else lined up, and they were a 'virtual company' (all contract hires) I took it.

Norm was a great boss. He anticipated problems, helped me grow into a better engineer. He accepted problems as opportunites to excel! (and meant it!) Unfortunately, he did not fit in with the corporate politics. He made the cardinal sin of gettting the job done on time, under budget, with no major problems reported to upper management. His software counterpart had four times the staff, was continuously behind and over budget, and had one crisis after another. Since they couldn't fire Norm, they just laid off his entire department...

-- Charlie Edmondson Edmondson Engineering Inc