Abstract

Dianna and Fred discussing engineering projects and dealing with product characteristics and requirements.

Key Points

Join Dianna and Fred as they discuss a listener’s question about dealing with product characteristics.

Topics include:

• How Reliability Engineers can help with requirements by asking questions and giving feedback.
• Ways to evaluate requirements.
• Plastic pigments, phoneless phones, game consoles that warm fried chicken, sneakers that order pizza

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.

SOR 830 Dealing With Product CharacteristicsDianna Deeney

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Show Notes

Dianna and Fred talk about a listener’s question about working with product requirements.

Reliability Engineers can help by giving feedback on requirements, so the team is clearer about them. Some questions to ask:

• Which requirements are important? Not all requirements are as essential as others.
• Which requirements are not well understood? This could indicate a risk to the project or product.
• What problem are we trying to solve? Ultimately, we’re creating something to be used by someone.
• Can we detect it: measure or otherwise verify?

Ways to evaluate requirements:

• Ask the team: Get an informal prioritization of the important requirements.
• Requirements Matrix: compare them to identify competing or repeating requirements.
• Urgent/Important Matrix: from the user’s perspective when using the product.
• Critical path of a project: Identify risks of the project because of the unknowns in the requirements.
• FMEA: Done early and often to prioritize failures and safety.

Requirements can evolve as we learn more about the product through its development. Trade-offs are probably going to be needed, which is going to lead to changes.

Related Topic

SOR 742 Reliability and Quality(Opens podcast in a new browser tab)