A Quick Communication Tip 💬

This only works in certain situations, but in those situations it can be extremely effective.

The situation:

You have a complex, high dollar product - think a small vehicle or piece of heavy equipment

You’re early in production - on the order of 100 or less units in the field

Your design is evolving - every unit is a little different

Root cause is difficult to determine - units are failing in new and interesting ways 😛

In this specific case, a powerful method of “Being transparent” is to set up a dedicated chat account (slack or similar). For every unit that fails, create a new, unique, channel.

Every time a tech touches that unit, all communication goes through the chat channel. When the service team has a question, it’s asked (and answered) in the chat channel. When engineering finds root cause, it’s shared in the chat channel.

This has the effect of documenting everything that happens with each unique unit, effortlessly. If we ever need to look for failure patterns across our product line, the data exists. It’s not organized yet, but it exists!

Compared this to the alternative of a mix one to one emails, texts, phone calls, note sheets, and who knows what else.

Which sounds more transparent to you? 😉

-Brian Schoolcraft