1/21/2014

Project Management - Teradyne Jaguar Project

Project Management - Teradyne Jaguar Project

Teradyne Corporation: The Jaguar Project

About Teradyne Corporation

Teradyne was founded by Alex dArbeloff and Nick DeWolf, who were classmates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1940s. Teradyne is a 45 year old corporation Sales of $1.8 billion in 2004 with over 6000 employees Teradyne corporation has following major units: oSemi-Conductor Test (64% revenue) oAssembly Test oBroadband Test oConnection Systems and Diagnostic Solutions

About Jaguar Project

The project was envisioned as a culmination of sorts in Teradynes 8 year effort to improve product development process In 2001 O Brien, a 25 year veteran of Teradynes engineering organization is appointed project leader Company decided to abolish the markets [] -segment-focused platform into a single platform engineering group Teradyne senior management made a pivotal strategic decision to embrace a flexible platform strategy Aim was to create a flexible tester platform that can be easily adapted to the needs for difference device segments Main emphasis was to use project management tools to streamline the product development activities

Question1: Compare & contrast Teradynes traditional project execution strategy to the
http://mbacase.blogspot.ca/2012/05/project-management-teradyne-jaguar.html 1/4

1/21/2014

Project Management - Teradyne Jaguar Project

approach it used in Jaguar? What was similar? What was different?

Strategy
Goal and Scope definition

Traditional Project Execution

Goals and scopes were not defined clearly up front. Since the requirements were not clear and not defined, the engineering and other stakeholders added many features during development which increasing the delivery time & quality Teradynes culture was to mandate the use of specific tools, but if was left up to the individual divisions and managers to decide There was very less visibility to higher management on the project status and phase Progress tracking was highly variable even within divisions, some were using phase gate model, detailed project planning, conduction after-action reviews and others not Market-segment-focused platform for testing. There was different test platform for each market segment Mostly over committed.

Jaguar Project Execution

Requirements & scope are very clearly defined. Delivery date is also finalized and adding scopes during development was not allowed

Project Management tools

Visibility to higher management Project Status tracking

Formalized project management tools like Work Breakdown structure, 3-point estimation, Critical Path analysis, Earned value analysis are used Clear visibility and tracking was possible

Usage of tools resulting in near accurate tracking of project status

Test Strategy

Embrace a flexible platform strategy

Resource

Correct commitment
2/4

http://mbacase.blogspot.ca/2012/05/project-management-teradyne-jaguar.html

1/21/2014

Project Management - Teradyne Jaguar Project

allocation

Some times to the extent of 300%

was provided, but sometimes forced people into commitment which was not possible in real world

Question 2: What impact did the project management tools have on the Jaguar project? Specifically, how did they change behavior? How did they influence performance?
Higher management did not pay enough attention to the data provided for project management tools and they did not get the understanding of the metrics Most of the time in meeting were spend on finding the right tool, right way to report the data rather than think about the product solutions The Teradyne culture of individual contribution was slowing eroding and people started to feel that they are not responsible for the project delivery timelines Hardware system were largely able to keep on track on timelines, but the software development emerged as a problem Software development division were under enormous pressure to keep the timelines The learning required for new software platform like windows NT was affecting the project delivery The software challenge turned out to be a bigger than anticipated. Even though the hardware units were on time due to software delays the push out was delayed by 6 months for Ultra Flex systems

Question 3: What were the unintended consequences of using the project management tools? What lessons should Teradyne take away from the Jaguar project?

Unintended consequences of using the project management tools Some of the metric were not understood by the management teams and they
http://mbacase.blogspot.ca/2012/05/project-management-teradyne-jaguar.html 3/4

1/21/2014

Project Management - Teradyne Jaguar Project

choose to use the metrics which was easier and understandable for them. This did not reflect on the correct project status More development resource were wasted due to the training, tracking and status update meeting Employees and development teams did not feel that it is their responsibility for project delivery and expected higher management to govern. The need to update status and maintain the project management tools created a diversion for the development teams from the real problems Lessons should Teradyne take away from the Jaguar project Value of the project management tools has to be taught to the project manager teams The need to understand and report the most important metric has to be training. Project management maturity assessment to identify strengths and weakness, and areas of improvement in the organizations project management practice The use of project management tools required a cultural change There is a need for continuous monitoring of the project progress Process is not important, but the capable people has to be there to execute these process Information overload should be avoided Project management tools cannot be used for the development stuff where there is lots of uncertainty.
Posted 11th May 2012 by - Neo
0

Add a comment

Enter your comment...

Comment as:

Google Account

Publish

Preview

http://mbacase.blogspot.ca/2012/05/project-management-teradyne-jaguar.html

4/4