Tech 4D

In part 1, I used an undergraduate mechanical engineering design competition to introduce the concept of Engineering Goodness.
In part 2, I provided a vocabulary for measuring engineering goodness.
In this final installment I will describe some goodness math, show why most of us aren’t nearly as good as we think we are and then provide some suggestions for improving our odds.

Goodness Math

I’ve defined engineering goodness in terms of a grid of values and percentages and shown why it is difficult in practice to fill out the grid. But pretend that you could actually calculate goodness not just for one project but for every project you have ever worked on. Or you can consider every project your team, company, competitors or industry have ever undertaken. You would get a bell curve (Figure 1):

Figure 1 Goodness Bell Curve

The best thing about this curve is that it lets you think past your current project or problem. To use the familiar sports analogy, you can work on your average without sweating every single game.

Now apply this concept to the coffee can competition (Figure 2)

Figure 2 – Coffee Can Competition Goodness Curve

The curve is skewed over to the “Not so good” side of things because most entries didn’t even meet the primary requirement, which was to pass the finish line. Delorian and Buggy were good and Oatmeal was great.
I think most creative technical people “get” this basic concept but have no idea what their own curve looks like. For instance, we sometimes work within “segments” (companies, industries, etc) where the curve is off to the left. Creating a “great” solution in a “not so good” company isn’t always a great accomplishment.

I have also observed that most technical people think they are on the right side of this bell curve. This tendency of people to overestimate their capabilities seems to be an inherent part of human nature, and has been reported over and over again in books and literature. Sadly we can’t all be above average.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that many individuals, teams and businesses exert little conscious effort toward moving their own curve to the right and making it more narrow (Figure 3).

Figure 3 – Move Your Curve to the Right.

What they seem to be missing is that the overall value of the solution is not linear as you move along the horizontal axis (Figure 4)

Figure 4 – The Value of Goodness

In fact the difference between a good solution and a great solution can be a huge. Depending on your key metric, it could be millions of dollars, thousands of man-hours, millions of unique visitors to your site or many customer satisfaction points.

If Figure 4 is correct, then small amounts of effort expended in moving your bell curve over to the right can mean big payoffs in the long run. Unfortunately, these payoffs are not easily quantifiable and it is difficult to establish a positive correlation between the initial actions and the end result. Further, it requires a long view of events because results will only show in aggregate over a number of “solutions”.

Now lets look at the Coffee Can Competition one more time (Figure 5)

Figure 5 – Coffee Can Competition Goodness and Value

This chart nicely sums up my original observation about Oatmeal: “No matter how you weight the engineering factors, the oatmeal box was far superior to other designs. It took less time to build, cost less, had less parts, was more reliable and it was faster. It was obviously a great solution. “

Steps to Improve your Odds
Anything you do to move your curve to the right and reduce the variability is usually worth the effort! Here is a short list of ideas:

• Follow a disciplined creative design process – there is plenty of guidance on this subject

• Challenge fundamental assumptions

• Always evaluate multiple solutions in parallel

• Measure against competitors (even if there are no direct ones)

• Don’t trust your instincts until they are measurably proven right

• Don’t assume your solution is good just because it works – let the bell curve be your guide

Engineering Goodness, part 1

Engineering Goodness, part 2

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 1:42 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.