Summary: Risk to IC development schedules can be minimized by comparing design plan assumptions with a database of historical industry designs and your company’s own history of completed projects to help you determine tradeoffs.

Simply put, schedule risk is the difference between the planned schedule, and the lessons of history. If you plan to finish a design with 20 engineers in 25 weeks, yet industry and corporate comparisons indicate that you need either 27 engineers or to lengthen the schedule to 34 weeks, you have identified schedule risk.

The Numetrics tools can compare your design plan assumptions with all designs in the industry database, or with a subset based on powerful filters, or most powerfully with your own company’s history of completed design projects. If your plan is more aggressive than the results achieved historically, then you risk missing your schedule. High levels of schedule risk disempower your engineers, because the plan feels unrealistic to them. It also creates business risk, especially if schedule is critical. It doesn’t make sense to agree to a plan that requires productivity much greater than you have historically been able to deliver.

On the other hand, it is reasonable to set a stretch goal that is a little better than your historical performance or the industry averages. That’s a stretch goal, and if the team believes it’s feasible, they will work hard to achieve it. This is a point where risk is managed, and the goals are achievable. Everyone likes to outperform their peers, but no one wants to be set up for failure.

By using Numetrics’ tools to analyze schedule risk, you can create a plan that is aggressive, but not so aggressive that it is doomed to fail. Such a plan is good for your team, and good for your business.