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R & D management


R & D management is the basis of the theory of the R & D architecture design and management, with the help of the team building the information platform for the R & D process, process design, performance management, risk management, cost management, project management and knowledge management series coordination activities.

Brief introduction
R & D management, a more broad areas of management. Can be understood from the narrow and broad:

Narrow definition: management, R & D or technology sector is extremely focused on product development and testing process.

Broad definition: R & D work is actually includes not only the technical development work, its scope covers the whole life cycle of new products, from product idea generation, concept formation, market research, product design, product realization, product development, product pilot, product launches, such as the whole process. From a managerial point of view, its scope covers the product strategy and planning, market analysis and product planning, product research and development organization structure design, R & D project management, research and development, quality management, research and development team management, research and development, performance management, research and development of human resources management, the platform development and technical pre-research and other fields

The basic idea of ​​good R & D management

1, to encourage innovation, suitable for R & D enterprise environment;

2, a commitment to open and equal corporate culture is the cornerstone of R & D management;

3, people-oriented, play to their creativity and initiative;

4, product development as an investment, market-oriented, emphasis on portfolio management and product management stage of decision-making;

5, the use of asynchronous platform-based development model;

6, matrix inter-departmental co-operation

7, the structure of the product development process

8, the user needs is the root of the drive R & D progress and innovation

Basic principles of design of the R & D management system
R & D management system design need to follow the following principles:

First, value-oriented, market-driven

Second, listen to the three aspects of sound (VOC, VOB, VOE)

Third, a balanced structured process (to strike a balance between structured and flexible)

Fourth, the organizational structure of cross-sectoral collaboration

Through matrix organizational mode, cross-sectoral collaborative R & D management process. Product development team should include representatives of markets, technologies, services, technology, testing, manufacturing and other fields, does not constitute a pure R & D organization.

Fifth, gradually strengthen the importance and role of project management

Permeates the entire R & D management process, project management and project management thinking and methods are widely accepted and used, the project manager from the part-time and gradually evolved into a full-time professional managers.

Sixth, technology development and product development phase separation to take asynchronous mode, avoid uncertainties and risks in technology research and product development process.

Seventh, the performance management system supporting the implementation of

Through effective performance management system design and implementation, protection the landing and implementation of the R & D management system.

Eighth, global planning, step by step

Advances in research and development management system, is not achieved overnight, require a lengthy process. Therefore, it is necessary for scientific planning of the entire system at an early stage, according to its capacities distributed implementation. Transit China Yang Fei teacher once said, "R & D management science, but also the practice of knowledge, in accordance with relevant theoretical system planning system, and then through a step-by-step implementation of the gradual landing; former focuses on the science and rationality, has a global role in guiding, which focuses on the practice and experience, landing performed to ensure both are indispensable; bite into the idea of ​​the fat is unscientific, will receive a painful lesson.

Ninth, people, processes and technology to consider synchronization

The design of the R & D system does not copy the cash on the more important is the business model for their own staff capacity, the scale of resources and technical strength. Out of blind imitation of advanced, will inevitably lead to failure.

Content
R & D team building

R & D is a creative work, effective R & D needs excellent R & D team, we can say what kind of R & D team, what kind of R & D results. Huawei have a saying: the maturity of the staff, cast products mature. Excellent R & D team is determined by three factors: the team of individuals, teams, mechanisms and team culture

R & D process design
The only sustainable source of R & D strengths is excellent R & D management process. An excellent design, a godsend, opponents of a misstep or a lucky advantage is unlikely to last long. Superior R & D process has always been able to find the best opportunities, the introduction of competitive products and services, and the fastest R & D results into the market.

R & D process improvement is a continuous process, and the need to constantly continuing to improve the development process. R & D process control to ensure that the R & D process design and improvement of persistent, standardization, and procedures.

Management of R & D costs
With the advent of the era of little profit, cost savings from all aspects, including research and development costs should be controlled. R & D cost control does not refer to the compression of the scale of R & D or to reduce R & D investment, but to reduce unnecessary spending in R & D, with less input to obtain a larger R & D results. Management of R & D costs and income of R & D results together. Products at different stages of its life cycle, are able to gain the interest of research and development in the life cycle of the product have different inputs, such as R & D investment in new product development when large, but almost no research and development revenue, once the new products developed, received the welcome of the market, will have to increase investment in research, improve product performance. To the maturity of the product, the market is highly competitive, improve R & D investment to shrink, until it is completely abolished.

R & D project management
R & D is a dynamic operation, the entire process across all departments, project management is the core means of the R & D management is indispensable.

R & D performance management
R & D team performance management can be an effective incentive R & D team enthusiasm, improve work efficiency. R & D management, performance management process also includes performance planning, performance coaching, performance evaluation and the results of the use of four parts. Performance evaluation index usually around the R & D performance management should take into account the overall strategy, balanced scorecard tools such as the development of R & D performance evaluation system.

R & D risk management
R & D personnel may be competitors poaching, external leaks or vandalism. R & D risk refers to the risk that R & D R & D personnel information may be leaks or damage suffered disaster, accident, or someone else's attack, it may lead to risk. R & D results risk refers to the risk that research and development of products or services may be out of date or unwanted, or R & D spending too much lead to business risk, or R & D investment in R & D to or greater than benefits. R & D risk management is based on risk as the main control objectives, to develop a series of rules and regulations to effectively reduce the risk to an acceptable level the following, or it must increase control measures.

The principles of product development

A matter of principle

I believe the specification;

I believe the tool;

I believe the experience;

I believe the upper.

Do not believe in the principle of

The correctness and completeness to complete the task on their own do not believe;

The correctness and completeness of the lower to complete the task do not believe;

Verified task a comprehensive correctness and integrity do not believe;

Do not believe that verified the correctness and completeness of the integrated system suitability.

The principle of vertical and horizontal division of labor

Horizontal division of labor
Divided by specialization. Such as: communications, software, hardware, structure, power and so on.

Vertical division of labor

By level.

System design, development and commissioning, production and processing, testing and verification

Information document of principles

Standardization of information;

Stage of the process;

Passed the document;

The document template.

Product development needs analysis process

Requirements analysis process

The needs analysis process before the start of the research and development of new products, new product development process to be related to the various elements of the systematic, quantitative analysis, so that the subsequent development process in the development of a control flow elements advance. In the needs analysis process, the following elements:

Market demand feasibility analysis;

Critical analysis of technical requirements;

Development environment needs analysis;

Development cost requirements analysis;

Human resource needs;

Estimation and evaluation of the progress of research and development.

Product R & D design process
The design process under the conditions of the start of the project, according to the elements of the definition of the needs analysis, aims to establish a set of standard R & D design process, a clear division of professional and technical, to determine the scope and elements of design considerations, to eliminate confusion over the R & D status, R & D hidden and backward transfer. In the design process, the design of the following procedures:

System design specifications;

System Requirements design;

Hardware design requirements;

Software design requirements;

The reliability of the system design;

Hardware testing requirements;

Software testing requirements;

Top-level design of the hardware system logic;

Top-level design (outline design);

The hardware logic detailed design;

Software design and coding;

Hardware test environment design;

Software testing platform design.

The simulation process
Simulation simulation process on the basis of the design process is complete, in order to fully guarantee the correctness of the design, improve design quality, eliminate the uncertainty of the follow-up implementation of the project, and verify that the project margin requirements, must be the key technology of new products validation to ensure that the engineering feasibility of the key technologies of the new product. In the case of a conditional, to the design and implementation of hardware circuit simulation, to ensure stable product base operating platform (hardware system); also the software design and synthesis of hardware and software simulation, to ensure that the software implementation correctness and comprehensive hardware and software integration.

Development and debugging process
IT product design bears a lot of designers understanding of the requirements for product functionality and processing idea and understanding and realize firmly rely on the designers personal knowledge background, areas of expertise and personal capacity constraints, so the inevitable in the design and implementation of the functions of the product, there are a lot of errors and imperfections.

In addition, the design also incorporates a number of design tools, designers face is not a product, but face design platform consists of a set of tools, designer tools, issue the appropriate commands from the tool to complete command. Tools to achieve process is the designer of the tool based on the general situation considered a "black box" operation, product designers, so there must be thinking of the tool designers and product designers thinking and understanding there are differences, especially on the nature of some of the less important item or feature is particularly prominent. This is the the tools side effects often talked about in the IT industry.

Therefore, the establishment of the development environment is an important part of the IT product development.

Test validation process
For the research and development of IT products, the test environment has a very special status. From the research and development of the IT industry in developed countries, the costs of product testing and testing cycles accounted for about 40% of the product development costs and cycle and to maintain an upward trend. Thus, the test environment for R & D in terms of IT products, with great significance.

Why the test environment so important? Its main factors are determined by the characteristics of the IT product itself. IT functional design is the design of a prior decision rules, decision-makers the ability and knowledge background, the changing state of the environmental factors will affect the quality of decision-making. On the basis of changes in the dynamic combination of environmental factors, how to confirm the correctness of the decision-making, in particular non-normal environmental change on the basis of how to confirm the safety of the decision-making is a very difficult task. Such confirmation the technical difficulty of decision making itself much more difficult than in the normal state. This is a test environment has an important position, one of the main features of IT products and traditional production differences.

Product R & D configuration is divided
The configuration of the product is the guarantee of success of product development.

Configuration definition of the new product development process is standing on the engineering point of view, the definition of the new product development process milestones.

Key technical configuration
According to the "needs analysis" definition of key technologies, on the basis of technical reserves, a key technology used in the definition of the new product configuration state to verify the feasibility of the key technologies to determine the content and location of the new technology for The subsequent configuration eliminates the uncertainty brought about by the new technologies.

Principle kind of body type
Depending on the positioning of key technology configuration for the new technology, according to other mature technology supporting, as defined in the configuration state of the prototype of the new products, to verify the feasibility of all the features of the products, new technologies and mature technology integration and to meet the system function under the premise of adaptive correction, the logic of the hardware and software to determine the correctness of an implementation of the hardware and software features of the new product, and laid the foundation of the hardware and software features for subsequent configuration.

Works like body type
According to the principle kind Institutional hardware and software features, according to the requirements of the engineering environment (such as: weight, power consumption, size, heat, electromagnetic compatibility, etc.), and other devices hinge relationship, define a new product engineering prototype configuration state , perfect principle kind of body type elements in the application engineering environment, the certification of new products in the application (or analog) engineering environment performance indicators and to achieve functional correctness of the ultimately the formation of the state - production prototype configuration The type has laid the basis of engineering.

Type of production-like institutions
Based on the results of engineering-like institutions based authentication, define new product prototype configuration state, submitted to the validation of the application test environment. Starting from the point of view of the user, through a lot of different users instance of the application test to verify the effectiveness and correctness of all functions of the new product, and based on the results form the final results of opinion submitted to the R & D department. R & D department based on the current state of the product, according to the production capacity of enterprises or industries, the production process and the corresponding production process file is generated, and to determine the testing and inspection standards, to lay the foundation for the production of products.

Product development validation divided
(1) design verification environment: the system functional simulation, hardware design operation (timing) simulation, functional simulation software;

(2) development and test environment: hardware testing, software testing, software and hardware testing;

(3) verification environment: with a variety of environments, various models, various manufacturers comprehensive test environment;

(4) a routine test environment: temperature, vibration, field, electromagnetic interference test

R & D management methods

R & D management methods, simply is: tell people what you do, and learn to do a good job. Measure of R & D management pros and cons of the three key indicators: quality, time and cost. People always want to do better (high quality), done quickly (less time) and less money (ie low cost). If three difficult both at the same time, the decision-makers must figure out the complex relationship between quality, time, cost, to determine what more important given optimization and compromise measures.

Some of the ways of the traditional R & D management
1 "double post" system

The "double post" Many of our research enterprise mobility caused by the loss of intellectual property rights of a workaround. The so-called "double post" system is to set up two post on an important position in the R & D process, do the same work, back up each other. "Double post" system to bring the main problem is:

First, due to the important post two sets of equipment to accomplish the same work with two sets of troops, resulting in the waste of human resources and equipment resources;

Second, if the two sets of troops complete results are inconsistent, resulting in the increase in the cost of confirmation;

Third, due to the R & D process many areas, such as the development process: design, simulation, debugging, testing; development phase: the principle parts, engineering parts, craft parts, test pieces, the trial early pieces, if two sets of the Ma Shengcheng the two sets of version to go through all aspects of the verification process, will greatly increase the cost of development, the development cycle and a waste of resources.

Almost double in each double post "system development costs and development cycle, so that there are more than double post" in the product development process, the entire development costs and development cycle will form explosive combination of increased .

"The important part is decomposed by more than one person bears

Important part of the decomposition by more than one person to bear, many of our research enterprise mobility caused by the loss of intellectual property rights of another solution. The so-called "important part of the decomposition by more than one person to bear the research and development process will be an important part of task decomposition and links shared by more than one person and done in collaboration. Important part of the decomposition by more than one person bearing? Quot; bring the main problem is:

First, if the important parts and aspects of task decomposition, will increase the system internal communication overhead and collaboration costs;

Second, the important work by important people assume the principle, if important people no longer accept other important work, will result in the waste of human resources; important also accept other important work, if once the movement of persons will result in the loss of the intellectual property rights of a number of important tasks, involve and affect the surface will be even greater;

Third, due to the R & D process links many important task decomposition and the participation of more than one person will greatly increase the R & D costs and development cycle.

3 "reporters" type of R & D

To accept Subject: project and acceptance of the project in accordance with the requirements of the higher-ups

Interview material: their own and the definition of market demand

Self-induction: Self summarized the approved system functional requirements,

Free play: independence and freedom to complete the function of the realization

Defined test and acceptance criteria finalized:

"Reporter" R & D management methods are: first, the individual as the main theme from receiving task (accept), requirements gathering (interview material), defined functions (self-induction), independent research (free play), self-testing (finalized) delivered to the task, the entire development process by personal control completed by personal cognitive limitations. Especially in today's knowledge economy and society, the knowledge explosion, the professional division of labor and technology are the main features of a knowledge-based economy, therefore, the personal cognitive ability is far from meeting the needs of society;

Second, due to the restriction of the personal and professional division of labor, "the reporter-style" R & D management methods often only highlights the application of the individual areas of expertise, while ignoring the effective involvement of other areas of expertise; such as: hardware engineers only highlights the effectiveness of the design of the hardware , ignoring the system design, simulation analysis, software design, hardware testing, software testing, system integration and other professional applications play;

Third, test and acceptance criteria defined in own legislation, and contrary to the research and development of product quality control and final confirmation of the basic principles of their own law enforcement.

Fourth, "reporters" R & D management methods will result in intellectual property from falling into the personal control.

4 "Step-issued" R & D management methods

The theme selection decision-making: superior leadership

The system functions to determine: is determined by the individual's ability and understanding of the commitment to the mission statement

Development of state control: the project team fragmented

Test results to confirm: Custom testing and acceptance criteria

"Step by step issued a" main problem is that R & D management methods

First, pass responsibility for research and development of the control flow of the main line, the goal of the mission statement for the completion of the research and development tasks, ignoring the control and inspection of the R & D process and the development of state node;

Second, the letters of responsibility and mission statement is difficult to fully reflect market demand and product function definition, the definition of market requirements and product functionality to the Task Force, which is limited by the task group cognitive, it is difficult to reflect the multi-disciplinary systems and enterprise the overall level of effective, resulting in product development objectives and market demand decoupling;

Third, the Task Force to the mission statement for the R & D tasks to complete the goals, letters of responsibility for the delivery of their own way, resulting in technical coordination and systems integration difficult, it is difficult to effectively achieve overall system goals among the Task Force;

Fourth, the task group in accordance with the letters of responsibility and mission statement to define themselves the task of testing and acceptance criteria, which not only caused their own legislation, law enforcement state, contrary to the research and development of product quality control and final confirmation of the basic principles, but due to various Task Force to assume the perspective of the task and cognitive different, the respective defined test and acceptance criteria is difficult to be consolidated and form a unified system of testing and acceptance criteria.

5 "tinker" R & D

Self-centered: self-centered, do not want to easily cooperate with others

Self-enclosed state of the art for the project: its own technical capacity

Self-development: self-enclosed developers, do not want to let others know and suggestions

"Tinker" type of R & D management methods:

Prone individual, the individual's cognitive ability to determine the technical state of the project;

Second, self-enclosed development, reluctance to use outside of their own cognitive abilities mature and new technologies, everything from the ground up, low-level redundant;

Third, the lack of standard design, increased product technology fuzzy, difficult to achieve the maintenance and upgrade of the product;

Fourth, intellectual property rests in the hands of individuals, likely to cause the loss of intellectual property rights.

Common R & D management methods
PACE method

As early as 1986, the United States PRTM's creation PACE (Product And Cycle-time Excellence, products and cycle optimization method) methodology. PACE elements of concern are: the right decisions, the project team, and the structure of development activities, development tools and technologies, product strategy, technology management, resource management. PACE regarded as the originator of product lifecycle management methodology in the field of. PACE was born, many companies and academic institutions to R & D management methodology suitable for the industry,

ISO9000 Quality System

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in order to meet the needs of quality assurance activities in international economic exchanges, in summing up the experience of the national quality assurance systems based on, after nearly a decade of work, published in 1987 the ISO 9000 quality management and quality assurance standards series . The first amendment in 1994, the formation of the ISO 9000 family of standards. Underwent a major revision in 2000, released the new standards of the ISO 9000 (2000 version).

CMM / CMMI

In November 1986, the federal government commissioned the Carnegie Mellon University (Carnegie-Mellon) Software Engineering Institute (SEI) to develop a method for the assessment of the ability of the software contractor. The SEI was released in September 1987 a set of software process maturity framework and a set maturity questionnaire. In 1991, SEI software process maturity framework developed into the Software Capability Maturity Model (Capacity Maturity Model CMM), the birth of the CMM 1.0.

PMBOK

Project Management Body of Knowledge is the general term of the project management domain knowledge, it is the 1980s summed up by the Project Management Institute (PMI) project management practices mature theory, methods, tools and technology. Subsequently been amended several times, the latest version is PMBOK2004.

PMBOK defines 44 basic project management process, given a detailed description of the project management process from the perspective of process input and output as well as the use of tools and technology. 44 project management process basically covering the basic project management practices in the management process, However, these project management process and product realization process must be combined to complete the entire project.

Agile RUP

Often encountered by companies in R & D management
(1) the absence of goals and direction, the lack of clear R & D strategy.

(2) R & D in the company's positioning is not clear, can not effectively integrate a limited R & D resources, there is no way to play the value of research and development in the enterprise.

(3) R & D demand information more passive, the lack of in-depth investigation and analysis of the company's internal and external demand.

(4) the formation of a preliminary list of the R & D needs, the lack of appropriate mechanisms to screening and screening, to form the final research and development topics.

(5) R & D work irrational forms of organization, lack of overall planning.

(6) project development, project members do not have a clear and reasonable responsibilities and rights provisions, co-operation and co-ordination of the project is basically driven by R & D personnel, the other members and departments only passive participation.

(7) R & D basis of summing up the work done very little, knowledge management system is not perfect, the ideas and results of research and development and technology tied to individuals rather than the company, undermining the continuity of research and development.

⑻ institutions and systems to monitor and control project run project there is a big risk, but also the lack of scientific assessment and analysis of project review mechanism project.

(9) lack of research and development of professional talent.

Avoid the five errors in the R & D management
Misunderstanding one: R & D management is a thing of the R & D department.

The second misunderstanding: R & D management reform should be immediate

Misunderstanding number three: IPD is the only choice for R & D management

Myth four: IPD is an integral part of CMMI

Misunderstanding Five: SMEs do not need to R & D management.

SMEs how to implement an effective R & D management
The current representatives of the industry's excellent R & D management practices advocated by IBM Integrated Product Development (IPD) and the United States SEI's Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). The two major R & D management system each other and with each other on the macro level of the combination of the two can be in the concept of understanding the strategic level, operational framework to help enterprises enhance the micro level of the specific implementation, operation guidance to help enterprises landing.

At present, China is making great efforts to improve the industrial structure, to encourage independent innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises. According to the the speaker years of R & D management practices and consulting experience, domestic SMEs in R & D management, the prevalence of the following main issues:

¨ In contrast, the senior management of small and medium-sized enterprises are more accurate grasp of market direction;

¨ enterprise business direction / mode is relatively simple, but is gradually extending product areas, and to provide more services in the form;

¨ sales volume, staff size, especially the number of R & D, the size of the organization with business expansion and rapid expansion;

¨ enterprise market capacity / sales capacity is generally high, but the internal R & D often can not keep up the speed of business, resulting in R & D projects more extension;

¨ some of the senior leadership of the non-technical R & D often is "out of control" because of I do not know how to participate in the research and development work;

¨ due to the size of the company's business / expansion of the number of R & D staff, organization construction to keep up with the speed, in particular, the performance of the introduction of a lot of people, but the company's efficiency has not improved, but not as good as the early days;

¨ The successful development of new products is almost unpredictable, relies heavily on the research and development team "cow, capable experts"; but the talent scale not keeping pace with this kind of capability more and more new development tasks Quantity.

¨ experienced staff introduced from the outside, but integrated into the problem; almost everyone with their own things, many problems are all due to the not standardized cooperation between the members of the product development lead, especially in between the different functions with (such as R & D and marketing / business, production, procurement, etc.);

¨ The company was established quite a long time, but you can not accumulate the experience at the organizational level; employee growth is entirely dependent on the mistake to gain experience and lessons;

¨ Company expansion of the scale, deeper levels of management, staff enthusiasm, initiative and organizational reasons weakening.

In the face of these management system model proposed by the International R & D companies and organizations, whether small and medium-sized enterprises can take the "used" to help self-improvement? The answer is yes. But must adhere to the following principles:

¨ conducting R & D management system should be based on the stage of business development, overall planning, step-by-step implementation of both short-term problems faced by, but also lay a good foundation for the future to the next level of the enterprise.

¨ seize the important and urgent improvements, to seize enterprise development phase input and output than the highest point for improvement, research and development management system, to provide the impetus for growth enterprises, science and technology continue to grow.

¨ Corporate R & D system never specification toward standardization process, the inevitable need to reinforce the infrastructure to provide basic protection for the enterprise continues to grow in the changing market environment.

¨ R & D infrastructure must be comprehensive and systematic, can not exist in a relatively short board.

¨ R & D system will be the main line of the product development process, the improvements can not be discrete, independent.

Thus, the speaker proposed model of early improvement of SMEs in enhancing research and development management capabilities on the road:

10 R & D management system elements
R & D strategy and business decisions

(2) R & D organizations operate

3 product development process

4 R & D project management

5 R & D human resources management

6 customer needs

7 Systems Engineering

8 technology development

R & D IT support 9.

10 skills management

R & D management objectives
● for key operating items required to complete the product development and the implementation of the quality management, a set of systematic, standardized operation, and will focus on the error-prone steps.

Whether to start a research and development project, or to terminate the major decisions, a set of very accurate assessment standards and scheduled order of decision-making mode, so that managers can make decisions in a timely manner.

● activities (concurrent engineering) to accelerate product development speed.

● For inter-departmental communication, a set of good division of responsibilities and coordination mechanisms.

● a strong market orientation, the beginning of the research and development activities, to invite the full participation of customers and suppliers.

● before the start of the research and development activities, the planning and preparation of the entire project is complete.

 

Shenzhen Linyuan Borui Enterprise Management Consultancy Co.,Ltd
Add: 618, B Building, Guanlan Business Mansion, Longhua District, Shenzhen.

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