BeTheSignal
Comment
Bhola_#1
I agree with your comment Eric
MikeLC
Personally I've seen this happen quite frequently in the past decade with some ...
A four hundred year old lesson for today
Eric Bogatin
10/5/2010 11:50 PM EDT
The competition is surging ahead. A few past public product failures are casting doubts on the ability of the company. The Boss feels under pressure to show the competition up, and he is pressing his product development team to deliver something that will blow the completion away.
A new product is planned that will show the world how powerful and important The Boss and his company are. The company had built a similar product which worked great, but this new design has an important new feature and there are no analytical models to predict the performance. The designer is the best in the business, but he is nervous about the design. It goes beyond his experience, and there is no time to slowly move up the learning curve. The Boss wants it his way.
The original designer leaves the project part way through. Management keeps changing the spec, to add more features that will “impress the world." The product is built, but when it is secretly tested, the test manager has to suspend the test or the handcrafted first article would have catastrophically failed. The Boss with the very strong personality is out of town and can’t be reached, and no one is brave enough to tell him of the failure. They hope it was a fluke.
Production moves ahead and the product is released to great fanfare. A huge party is held to celebrate the launch of this new product, the company’s flagship creation, the state of the art, what will surely show the world how great their leadership is.
And what a magnificent disaster it is. In less than an hour of operation, the product destroys itself; lives are lost, all under the eyes of friends, families and competitors. The response of The Boss, who is still out of town: “Imprudence and negligence must have been the cause, and the guilty parties must be punished.”
Does this story sound familiar? Is it about the latest PC operating system? Is it about the last product your company wanted to ship, but you kept failing FCC certification and missed the market window? Is it about the first high speed serial link product your company tried to bring to market, without enough signal integrity experience to avoid the common landmines?
This is the story of the Vasa, a sailing ship launched on Aug. 10, 1628. The Boss was King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden. At the time of construction and testing, the King was leading his invading army into Poland, counting on his new battleship to help win the war.
Next: Playing catch up
A new product is planned that will show the world how powerful and important The Boss and his company are. The company had built a similar product which worked great, but this new design has an important new feature and there are no analytical models to predict the performance. The designer is the best in the business, but he is nervous about the design. It goes beyond his experience, and there is no time to slowly move up the learning curve. The Boss wants it his way.
The original designer leaves the project part way through. Management keeps changing the spec, to add more features that will “impress the world." The product is built, but when it is secretly tested, the test manager has to suspend the test or the handcrafted first article would have catastrophically failed. The Boss with the very strong personality is out of town and can’t be reached, and no one is brave enough to tell him of the failure. They hope it was a fluke.
Production moves ahead and the product is released to great fanfare. A huge party is held to celebrate the launch of this new product, the company’s flagship creation, the state of the art, what will surely show the world how great their leadership is.
And what a magnificent disaster it is. In less than an hour of operation, the product destroys itself; lives are lost, all under the eyes of friends, families and competitors. The response of The Boss, who is still out of town: “Imprudence and negligence must have been the cause, and the guilty parties must be punished.”
Does this story sound familiar? Is it about the latest PC operating system? Is it about the last product your company wanted to ship, but you kept failing FCC certification and missed the market window? Is it about the first high speed serial link product your company tried to bring to market, without enough signal integrity experience to avoid the common landmines?
This is the story of the Vasa, a sailing ship launched on Aug. 10, 1628. The Boss was King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden. At the time of construction and testing, the King was leading his invading army into Poland, counting on his new battleship to help win the war.
Figure 1. A scale model of the Vasa with the original painted wooden sculptures, designed to show the world the might and power of the King of Sweden, in display at the Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden.
Next: Playing catch up
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
prabhakar_deosthali
10/6/2010 2:07 AM EDT
Such scenario is applicable to nine out of ten products which are prepared for launch in any company today. This is because the imagination of those who want to market the product races ahead much faster than those responsible to implement the ideas. And most of times we already have a competition which has the similar product already in the market. In the haste to beat the competition we forget that we have to first catch up with the competition. The result is a big fiasco as the product delivers on ideas but fails on perfromance or the product is well built and robust and the market trend has already moved away from the product.
Sign in to Reply
Robotics Developer
10/6/2010 7:49 PM EDT
I had a boss that used to say "That's why we pay you the big bucks!" when the impossible needed to be designed in no time with limited resources. It seems that everyone has experienced this type of program car wreck. What are some of your past stories? We had a marketing group that promised a new processor that was 1/3 the size, had added support for double precision floating point math, and at a target price of 1/10th! Needless to say we informed the powers that be: You can have speed, power, size PICK TWO!...
Sign in to Reply
Frank Eory
10/12/2010 4:17 PM EDT
Funny, I had a boss that used to say "We're going to leapfrog the competition", also in no time and with limited resources.
What that really meant was we were about to engage in a game of Frogger!
Sign in to Reply
JMWilliams
10/7/2010 2:31 PM EDT
A similar event occurred in 1545, when the English ship of the line Mary Rose capsized because she was top-heavy. She was maneuvering during a sea battle, rolled too far, her gun ports took on water, and she sank with over 90% casualties.
A more directly relevant example of requirements creep was the Messerschmitt ME-262 jet fighter. This plane could have been manufactured in large numbers in about 1943, but Hitler kept demanding more and more diverse functionality -- light bomber capability, dive-bombing, etc. Happily for the free world, this airplane was not ready for combat until early 1945, too late to have any effect on the outcome of World War II.
Sign in to Reply
balu1n
10/14/2010 10:21 PM EDT
Another aspect of the ego of bosses is that it affects many people's career. Such bosses' only aim is to gain publicity with minimum understanding of the issues and details (that also will be blamed on the staff anyway!). Whe it works, it is him, and when it fails, it is the staff.
Sign in to Reply
DrQuine
10/14/2010 11:08 PM EDT
"Speak Truth Unto Power" was good advice and remains good advice. It saves lives, money, and even enables corrective action to be taken in a timely manner. It just requires courage.
Sign in to Reply
docdivakar
10/20/2010 12:41 PM EDT
The product owners must balance between time to market, performance, cost, reliability and most important, safety of the product in its operating environment. But often, marketing ends up in the driving seat, has its way and the results are well enunciated by stories like these.
It is most important for engineers to speak up. No matter how smart we get with all the software tools and computing devices, there is no substitute to sheer commonsense!
@Eric, I concur with you 100%, simulate the most you can in any design! I am a firm believer in that and do all the time.
Dr. MP Divakar
Sign in to Reply
ReneCardenas
10/26/2010 12:52 PM EDT
In MHO this is one of many stories that reflect on the weak side of human endeavors, nobody should be surprised that this tale will continue to repeat itself, as long as the product/system is based on aggressive irrational schedules, and the innate weakness in every individual overwhelmed with power, that fails to balance his wishes with a doze of reality checks.
Sign in to Reply
MikeLC
10/31/2010 2:36 AM EDT
Personally I've seen this happen quite frequently in the past decade with some companies that I am no longer associated with. I agree with you that it is likely to be repeated, but wish it wasn't so.
Sign in to Reply
Bhola_#1
10/31/2010 10:39 PM EDT
I agree with your comment Eric
Sign in to Reply