Overcoming Setbacks in Development The Key to Lasting Success

– Seeing is believing –

What holds back many development organisations from making positive impactful changes?

Sadly, in my experience, the answer is usually very simple. They often give up implementing the initiative before they see the positive results. Those of us who have worked on successful complex system developments know only too well how smooth the transition through the Integration, Verification and Validation phase can be, when the requirements and architecture were well defined and elaborated (many years earlier).

I have heard stories of companies giving up on initiatives after as little as 6 months, when their typical project turn-around time is 2 to 3 years. How can it be possible in this timeframe to know that the initiative is ineffective? We must be patient with continuous improvement initiatives, otherwise we risk going around in circles and repeatedly running through the initial phases of development without reaping any of the rewards.

One of the privileges of working within many different engineering organisations, is that one sees vastly different maturities of engineering capabilities. At the high-end of the spectrum, employees will often never question why they do certain Systems Engineering activities at given points in the development lifecycle, as they inherently know this is critical for success. At the low-end of the spectrum, the employees argue endlessly over the necessity to produce even the simplest of high-value systems engineering artifacts.

What I have noticed in cases where projects are seen through to the end, is that the very best engineering organisations always believe they can be better. Staff believe in their individual contributions, the end goal and in each other’s capabilities and skills. This in turn leads to initiatives being successfully implemented and the entire organisation reaping the rewards.

Seeing is believing!

– Mike Johnson