Caught in the middle between engineers and management, you’ve got to keep both sides happy and informed of each other's movements. At the same time, you can’t let those movements get in the way of your team getting the project done nor can you worry management with the day-to-day details of product development. Everyone wants just the right amount of information, not too little, not too much, and they all look to you to provide it.
Communicating With Management
Management is, rightfully so, primarily concerned with budget and deadlines. They leave the details to you. To keep them assured the project is going smoothly on the technical side, you need to quickly understand the progress of the project, foresee any complications and mitigate them before they become serious risks. Similarly on the financial side, you’re responsible for holding steadfast on the budget without sacrificing functionality.
Get Control of Costs and Components
Stay on budget and inside the confines of approved components
- Set target BOM costs and track your team's progress during the design.
Learn More about ActiveBOM - Connect directly to your existing ERP database to put component pricing and availability information at your designers' fingertips.
Learn More about Supply Chain Integration - Manage the lifecycle and approval status of components for your organization.
Learn More about Component Management
Communicating With Your Team
You’re concerned with getting the project done and satisfying management. You leave details to your team. Throughout the course of the project, effective and efficient communication with your team will ensure necessary information is conveyed yet doesn’t become a burden. Ideally, you’ll communicate directly in their design environment in a way that doesn’t require them to waste time digging through emails and looking for context. You must communicate the budget and give your team the freedom to find new and creative ways to accomplish the project goals while still playing within the confines of approved components and vendors. You need to give them the information they need to do the best they can.
Templates and Managed Projects
Keep your engineers productive while ensuring data integrity
- Define a project’s templates to ensure company standards are followed.
Learn More about Managed Projects - Establish and enforce Version Control and Repository use to remove the guess work of project lifecycle management.
Learn More about Managed Projects
Project Management
Once the budget and timeline are set, you’re responsible for holding the line. You work backwards from the target cost goal by selecting and approving components for use. You instruct your engineers to keep proper documentation, build and use the right templates and store project data in the appropriate repositories; how do you keep that from becoming too much of a burden? Lastly, and potentially most importantly, you need to manage the approval process to ensure that only approved designs which meet all specs and requirements are sent to production.
Collaborate, Approve and Release Designs
Manage the flow of your team's projects
- Collaborate on the same project across design domains, even in real-time on the same PCB.
Learn More about Collaboration - Comment directly on schematics and PCBs so your teams don’t need to chase emails or guess about context.
Learn More about Commenting - Approve designs for the next stage and ensure only verified data gets released.
Learn More about Lifecycle Management
