White Paper:
"Increasing Product Development Capacity by Using Virtual Design Teams"
by Steve Mendoza, TechniQuest Associates, Inc. copyright 2009
The concept of a Virtual Design Team is born from the desire of companies to increase product development capacity on an “as needed” basis, without increasing associated overhead. The term “virtual” is used in the sense that the team can, but need not be, physically or geographically co-located with the customers existing engineering team. Indeed, technologies such as VPN, web conferencing and the like readily allow the efficient sharing of technology and information without sacrificing quality or security. The “team” may include one or numerous engineers depending on the project needs.
Aggressive development schedules, changing product requirements and priorities,
unforeseen obstacles- these are all too frequent occurrences in the world of product development. A schedule delay, the sacrifice of one product in favor of another and/or a scaling back of product features is the inevitable impact. This is where a virtual team can provide needed flexibility to help keep things on track.
The virtual team integrates with the customer’s organization, adapts to the need at hand, whether large or small, and produces deliverables that are essentially transparent to the customer and can be supported into the future by their existing engineering teams. The virtual team achieves this level of integration though the following:
• Consistent and open communication
• Use of compatible hardware and software development tools
• Use of compatible MRP tool(s)
• Use of compatible documentation and process standards
• Use of industry standard output files for manufacturing
• Complete data and technology transfer upon project completion
• Complete confidentiality
By adhering to the above principles, the virtual team becomes a viable part of the existing engineering team, providing on demand support for hardware, software and firmware specification and development.
TechniQuest’s virtual design team can provide any level of support necessary, from
simple circuit design to large system implementation. Our reputation is based on the
aforementioned principles and we pride ourselves in delivering sound engineering advice and making our customers successful.
