How do you control your product engineering budget and timeline?

Those responsible for managing the enterprise bear the burden of honest communication to all stakeholders, including management. The art of sustainable management requires timely accurate (if not precise) intelligence of all resources (including remaining calendar time) and its dissemination upwards, downwards, and in all directions. That communication upwards demands care, as explicit or tacit acceptance of unrealistic objectives, goals, timelines, and budgets meets the clinical symptoms of mendacity; often, however, to certain types (which infest all levels of the organizational chart), anything other than “yes” can be construed as a lack of empathy, competence, and reliability. I term it “the art of advising the Emperor his fly is open”

Define Clear Objectives by setting clear and specific project objectives. This helps the team stay focused and prevents scope creep, which can lead to budget and timeline overruns. Create a comprehensive project plan that outlines the scope, tasks, milestones, and dependencies. Break down the project into smaller, manageable phases or iterations.

Define success criteria and how to mesure it. Building the product is just one step to launching it. It's not the same to launch Pokemon Go than launching a Wordpress site. Include non-functional requirements to improve scope definition. Defining product vision, value proposition, target market, user personas, and key features is a whole scope itself and it's an iterative process. Do not get caught in the waterfall trap.

Writing down the scope of your product is no easy task. I usually break it down between the easy stuff and the hard stuff about my products. Easy stuff: -What does the product do? What's so special about this product that other products don't do? -Who does it do it for? (target market, audience, demographics) -Where, when? Hard stuff: -What are the technological barriers to developing the product? -What are the key challenges in developing the product? -What are the assumptions I've made about the product?

List out the major activities and resources available in hand and out source. Asses the risk involved, legal issues and other factors. This will give the global cost and timeline. Discuss with the subordinates, suppliers and external officials and consultant. Further this will provide the idea to whom to assign these activities to break down into further tasks. This will provide the budget and time requirements. Further have a closer look, and provide allowances to overcome the unknown factors.

Use previous estimation templates. If there's no previous data to solidify estimation activities, break down activities to an atomic unit that is easier to establish as a control unit for the whole estimation cost activity. If you have no previous experience executing an activity, you should stick to budget definition and make it work.

Clarity in defining the scope is essential. When the goals and deliverables are thoroughly comprehended, effective communication with the primary stakeholders becomes crucial. Utilizing their valuable feedback, informed by their experience, can significantly enhance the accuracy of time, resource, and budget estimations.

When creating a schedule, it's beneficial to use well-established and tried-out timelines for common tasks in a similar product development context. For example, in aviation, a new "clean sheet" aircraft design often takes longer than 5 years to design and certify, however when breaking it down to smaller tasks, it often takes between 18-36 months of flight testing prior to certification.

In product development, proper estimation isn't just prudent—it's pivotal. Start with a triad approach: design, engineering, and QA. Don't sideline QA; allocate 25-33% of your engineering effort to it. Ignore this, and you risk a buggy release. If your feature sniffs at Data Science or Machine Learning, adjust your scope. These elements are time-intensive, often necessitating iterations and validation. Next, your release plan. A pilot phase isn't a footnote; it's a chapter. Factor in time for feedback and adjustments. Overlook this, and you’ll likely miss your deadlines. By covering these bases, your estimated production release date isn’t just hopeful; it’s strategic. In a complex process, a well-estimated plan is your truest compass.

The pivotal phase in the process is scheduling; it's what distinguishes successful programs from those that falter or fall behind on milestones. Breaking down tasks into smaller steps or milestones and drawing insights from the most experienced resource, along with leveraging insights from other platforms or programs as references, will play a vital role in precise task scheduling and duration estimation. Regularly checking in and seeking feedback will be essential to detect potential roadblocks that could affect deliverables.

In my role as project manager at a tech startup, I live by one rule: Execution is everything. When we're launching a new feature, the design must be locked in and approved by stakeholders first. It's the compass that guides us through the unknown waters. Estimates are often wrong, so we dissect our plan, prioritizing features based on impact and the need for early user feedback. But here's the kicker: instead of one grand release, we go for quick, iterative cycles—1 to 2 weeks, managed by small teams of 2-3 engineers. This speedboat approach lets us pivot based on real-time feedback from pilot users, navigating us closer to our milestones.

Solid change management: Establish a process for handling changes to the project scope. Changes should be evaluated for their impact on the budget and timeline before being approved.

Proper change and risk/issue management is made up of 3 key aspects: 1) A process to capture the potential change or risk/issue, and submit it for evaluation, with a clear owner. The owner is responsible to raise a Product Change Request (PCR) in case of a change, or a Problem Solving Sheet (PSS) in case of a risk or issue. 2) A process to evaluate the cross-functional impacts of a change or a risk/issue, including impacts to timeline/schedule, budget & product characteristics/specs, which should be referred to a decision board (to decide if change or risk mitigation should be implemented or not). 3) Once a decision is taken, a proper project management plan should be established to implement the change or risk mitigation.

In addition to comments provided … be really clear upfront on RACI (responsible, accountable, consult, inform). Knowing who owns/ is accountable for a decision or deliverable heading into a meeting will help drive or maintain clarity.

No need to reinvent the wheel either. Consider established industry standards from other industries or products. Example, if the team doesn’t know what the success criteria should be for a given phase of the product/ program with respect to manufacturing readiness, the US government has a great public handbook for how to evaluate technology readiness or manufacturing readiness!

Continuous Review and Improvement: Regularly review the project's performance and identify areas for improvement. Implement lessons learned from previous projects to enhance budget and timeline management.

Unexpected challenges can arise during the project lifecycle. Flexibility and adapting to changing circumstances are essential for effective budget and timeline management. Look over your strategies regularly and adjust them to ensure successful project delivery.