CHALLENGE
Stop ongoing schedule slip of chip development timeline, which had already been extended from 12 months to 18 months. The merchant chip development cycle time of a mid-sized OEM was continually slipping from the day of design kick-off. The company had committed to a 12-month schedule for original design to first prototype for the customer. The project was 4 months in and already projected to be a minimum of 6 months behind schedule.
DIAGNOSIS
- A process evaluation yielded these key impediments:
- Design scope was underestimated due to incorrect assumptions
- Pre-existing internal design intellectual property (IP) bloc was significantly less mature than planned
- Third-party IP quality was poor
- Design verification effort was under-resourced
- Team had extremely low morale and was floundering
KEY CHANGES
- Instituted a fundamental process change from spreadsheets to an industry-standard tool for team collaboration that encompassed requirements, tasks and bug tracking.
- AGILE scrum methodology was implemented in all functional areas to kick-start a shift in the culture of the group and improve intra-group cohesiveness and communication.
- Augmented resources in under-resourced functions.
IMPACT
- Project delays were halted, and schedule slippage was capped at 6 months.
- $1M in direct costs were saved
- Opportunity costs of resource allocation for other projects avoided
- The company made business process changes to better determine the maturity of internal IP before project onset.
- They instituted stringent quality checks on inbound IP earlier in the process and changed the way third-party IP was evaluated for inclusion before program onset.
- Contract structure with customer was recommended to better manage incoming 3rd party IP and design library supply chain.