In the context of agile projects, such as the design and implementation of EV assembly-line technologies, where the pace of innovation and change requires rapid adaptation and close collaboration, it is important to rethink the role and structure of teams.

The creation of agile project teams becomes a primary requirement. These teams must not only have technical skills. They must also be capable of agile collaboration and real-time problem solving. It is this team dynamic that allows them to maximize every opportunity for innovation while effectively responding to any changes in project or market requirements.

GERMANENGINEER.COM offers the following practical strategies for building and managing agile teams that can overcome typical challenges and deliver outstanding results.

1. Small Teams

To facilitate effective communication among team members, it’s important to keep the team size manageable. As the number of team members grows, the number of interactions increases exponentially. These complex interactions often require structured processes such as meetings and workshops. An overly large team can lead to a higher risk of communication breakdowns because individuals may not have enough time to engage with all of their colleagues as needed. For this reason, some agile frameworks explicitly state the optimal team size. For example, Scrum suggests building teams of 7 +/- 2 members.

If the scope of the work requires more people than the optimal small team size, GERMANENGINEER.COM provides methods for dividing the work among multiple teams, such as Feature or Component Teams, Scrum of Scrums, LeSS, or SAFe.

2. Cross-functional Teams

In agile projects, cross-functional teams play a critical role in driving collaboration and innovation by bringing together diverse expertise from multiple disciplines. For example, to ensure the success of EV manufacturing projects, it is critical to assemble a team that integrates design, engineering, manufacturing, and automation expertise from the outset. By working together from the beginning, designers and engineers can ensure a seamless transition from product design to manufacturing, increasing the overall efficiency and success of the project. Early involvement of all relevant specialists also helps to avoid costly design errors, rework and project delays. An interdisciplinary approach also reduces reliance on external partners who often work at different speeds and disrupt team dynamics. In addition, cross-functional teams promote continuous professional development by allowing team members to share experiences and learn from each other.

GERMANENGINEER.COM excels at identifying the necessary expertise and building effective cross-functional teams, leveraging its extensive experience in manufacturing projects.

3. Under One Roof

Effective team collaboration and communication should be simple, clear, and concise. In this respect, modern communication tools such as messaging apps and video conferencing still have limitations compared to face-to-face communication. As a result, team members have to travel for face-to-face meetings, which is time-consuming.

To maximize the efficiency of collaboration, GERMANENGINEER.COM facilitates project teams to always work in the same physical location. This allows for immediate, spontaneous communication and the natural flow of ideas that is often more limited in virtual environments. Face-to-face interactions also foster a stronger sense of community and teamwork, increasing trust and understanding among team members. A great example of this approach is Tesla’s Gigafactory in Texas, where all employees, blue collar and white collar, work under one roof, fostering effective team communication and collaboration.

By prioritizing the working product, the second value of Agile inherently encourages increasing the functionality and usability of the product – its continuous improvement. For teams working on electric vehicle projects, improvement is not an option, but a necessity. An electric car must improve in many areas, such as range, charging time, reliability, and price. To achieve this, key components such as batteries and electric motors must be continuously improved in both design and production.

To foster creativity and successful implementation of innovative ideas in project teams, GERMANENGINEER.COM implements the following practical strategies:

1. Simplicity

This strategy encourages the project team to minimize the amount of work (including non-value-added work) and its complexity. Simple tasks can be automated to get the job done better and faster.

GERMANENGINEER.COM focuses on explaining why the team should strive for simplicity and what benefits or rewards the team can expect if they succeed. The idea is not to get more work done in less time, but to use the extra time for self-improvement. This unleashes the team’s creativity, and people begin to optimize the processes around them, creating innovative assembly line technologies, modern workplaces, and high-quality factory jobs.

2. High Bar

A high bar is necessary to ensure that you cannot simply copy your old solution. It also prohibits you from digging through documentation to find solutions that have already been done by others. Elon Musk’s directive for Tesla to produce 20 million cars per year – as many as Toyota and VW combined – is a great example of inspiring Tesla’s teams to innovate in the style of the second value of the Agile Manifesto. By setting the bar so high, Tesla engineers are encouraged to experiment and develop truly innovative approaches to design and manufacturing.

GERMANENGINEER.COM constantly raises the bar to keep project teams thinking about improvement rather than getting bogged down in routine work.

To implement the third Agile value “Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation”, project managers today use the Lean Startup approach, based on Eric Ries’ book of the same name.¹

“Rather than building something alone in a dark basement, the goal is to get a product into customers’ hands as quickly as possible to understand their needs through tangible experience and iterate your product to meet these needs.

For Tesla, following this approach meant shortening development cycles, forgoing trial production runs and diving straight into full-scale production. That is, full-scale production of a cutting edge product at the edge of feasibility, at volumes 100X higher than they had experienced, using a new and untested production approach. Unfortunately, they don’t call it hardware for nothing… the same rules do not apply.”²

The Lean Startup approach needs to be refined in the context of “hardware” projects.

Practical Agile Principle #3: Apply the Lean Startup approach to EV “hardware” manufacturing projects, shifting the focus from rapid and continuous product delivery to early and continuous risk mitigation.

Early and continuous risk identification and reduction creates the same customer value (customer satisfaction) as rapid and continuous software delivery. It prevents risks and uncertainties from escalating into more serious problems later in the project, thereby increasing the chances of overall project success.

Risks associated with innovation are often among the most important and dangerous risks in projects for several reasons:

• Unpredictability and uncertainty: Innovation, by definition, involves new ideas, technologies, or approaches that have not been tested or widely applied. This creates a high degree of uncertainty and unpredictability.
• High project impact: Failure in the innovation part of the project can have a significant impact on the entire project, including delays, budget increases, and even complete project cancellation.
• Technical complexity: Innovation projects often involve complex technical solutions and require a high level of expertise, which increases the risk of technical problems.
• Financial risks: Innovation work often requires significant investment and failure can result in significant financial loss.

To mitigate the risks associated with innovation, it is important to identify and prioritize individual risks by assessing their probability and impact. This principle is closely aligned with the well-known principle of “prioritize and execute” – identify the most important thing and execute it first. For EV manufacturing projects, this means find the biggest risk in the design, development, procurement, manufacturing, assembly, delivery, installation, acceptance, operation, and maintenance of the EV manufacturing equipment and fix it first. The earlier and more continuously the biggest risks are identified and mitigated, the faster the project progresses, resulting in earlier and more profitable completion.

It is also important to conduct early and frequent risk reviews. A risk review serves as a checkpoint where innovation progress and remaining risks are analyzed, and decisions are made to adjust the project based on the results of the analysis. If the innovation process is successfully validated at this point without significant risks, the project continues to develop and improve the product in the planned direction. If critical risks or failure to meet expectations are identified, the innovation can be pivoted, and the project changes direction.

The more often innovation risks are reviewed, the faster adjustments can be made to the project. For example, Elon Musk at Tesla sets very short intervals between reviewing prototypes of new cars. If the creative efforts of the designers and engineers don’t meet his expectations as a customer, the work doesn’t continue. These regular reviews minimize unnecessary work and demonstrate how to effectively manage innovation processes and get timely feedback. Involving customers in risk reviews ensures continuous collaboration with customers and regular adaptation of the product to changing market needs. It also improves the overall quality and acceptance of the final product and strengthens customer relationships.

Risk identification and review activities create a visual plan that serves as a project roadmap. Each event provides a starting or ending point for innovative and creative processes, facilitating effective management and development of new ideas.

GERMANENGINEER.COM plans and conducts risk identification and review events for EV manufacturing projects, such as:

1. Design Review: Expert analysis of new manufacturing technologies for feasibility, applicability, and effectiveness.
2. Prototype Review: Testing a prototype of production equipment to validate the concept, identify potential flaws, gather customer feedback, refine the design, and create manufacturing specifications.
3. Manufacturing Capability Assessment: Assessing the risks associated with in-house technological capabilities and manufacturing capacity. Includes a cost-benefit analysis.
4. Supplier Capability Assessment: Assess risks associated with component supply, including raw material availability, supplier evaluation and selection.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lean_Startup retrieved 06/11/2024. ︎
2. How Tesla Used Robotics to Survive “Production Hell” and Became the World’s Most Advanced Car Manufacturer retrieved 06/11/2024. ︎

In innovative projects, such as EV manufacturing projects, the fourth value of the Agile Manifesto, “Responding to Change over Following a Plan,” emphasizes the balance between innovative creativity and project constraints. It recognizes that while innovation is desirable for its potential rewards, it must not jeopardize project schedule, cost, or other constraints. When innovation becomes a liability rather than an asset, the project should pivot to a simpler and more viable approach. Determining when innovation is no longer feasible within project constraints is a critical aspect of project management, especially in an agile context.

Innovation is often pursued to enhance effectiveness. The goal is to do the right things – whether that means developing new products, services, or methods that better meet customer needs, outperform competitors, or address new markets. However, innovation inherently comes with risks and uncertainties. Sometimes, innovative methods may not yield the desired outcomes or may prove to be less effective than anticipated. When an organization realizes that an innovative process isn’t yielding the expected benefits – perhaps it’s too costly, complex, or simply not delivering the desired results – it must revert to or adopt SOPs.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) represent established, tried-and-tested ways of doing things. Developed and refined over time, these SOPs serve as a reliable fallback when innovation stalls. They are about efficiency – doing things right. SOPs streamline processes, reduce errors, and ensure consistency in quality. They may not be as cutting-edge as innovative methods, but they offer reliability and predictability, which are crucial for operational stability, cost control, and ensuring progress toward project milestones. Switching from non-viable innovative processes to SOPs is an exercise in balancing efficiency and effectiveness. It’s about recognizing what works best for the organization’s goals and adapting accordingly.

Practical Agile Principle #4: Pivot to a simpler approach.

If an innovation doesn’t work, a project should pivot to a simpler approach. This means choosing a standard design or established technology over an untested new one. It also means standard operating procedures (SOPs) that help engineers and technicians implement standard designs and established technologies quickly and efficiently. The goal is to ensure that a project is not delayed because an innovative solution failed. This principle corresponds to the well-known principle of “decentralized command”; someone should make the call, i.e. tell the project team when to return to the standard approach. It could be someone on the project team or the project manager, but the key is to have people on the project team who have the courage to say so.

This shift from a creative approach to simpler, proven methods reflects strategic flexibility and pragmatic decision-making. Organizations must be willing to experiment with new ideas but also disciplined enough to recognize when an innovation is not performing as expected. The ability to pivot back demonstrates a commitment to operational excellence and a focus on long-term sustainability over short-term gains. Ideally, this shift is not seen as a failure of innovation but as part of a continuous improvement process. Organizations can learn from the unsuccessful innovative attempts, applying these lessons to future projects or even to enhance their SOPs.

GERMANENGINEER.COM provides a framework for identifying the tipping point at which continuing an innovative approach may outweigh its benefits at the expense of increased time or cost. The expertise provided is based on many completed innovative manufacturing projects and helps project stakeholders (both contractors and customers) make informed decisions that balance the need for innovation with the practical constraints of schedule, budget, and resource availability.

Here are some examples of changes during a manufacturing project that illustrate the need to move from a creative approach to simpler, proven methods:

• Risks associated with the innovation (e.g. technological uncertainty, market unpredictability) do not decrease.
• The project consumes significantly more resources (time, budget, people) than planned without making adequate progress.
• The innovative aspects are not aligned with user needs or expectations, or diverge from the core objectives of the project, based on feedback from customers, team members, and sponsors.
• Innovation is significantly behind or fails to meet an industry benchmark.
• Costs (including opportunity costs) are significantly higher than the expected benefits.
• The project team is consistently faced with challenges beyond their skill level, or morale is low due to the complexity or uncertainty of the innovative aspects.