A Leadership Mindset, fixing issues on the field (GEMBA) with humility, rigor and ethics

A leader shares his/her knowledge, does not withhold information or engage in politics, initiates change on the field, uses state-of-the-art tools and processes, and encourages his/her colleagues to do the same by demonstrating the gains in efficiency, quality, reliability, safety, and costs for his/her team and company.

I've had Program/Project/Team Management-Lead or PMO Planner responsibilities in very different environments:

Program/Project Manager in a  very "projectized" structure (Automotive small engineering company) in a chaotic environment with (see details in section below):

- the responsibility for both the budget and the resources

- very high pressure from both the customer (OEM PSA/Stellantis) and the internal senior management

- no support from independent quality assurance or similar team

- no processes/tools in place, whatever the topic is: Project Management, Requirement Traceability & Consistency, V&V Automation, Build& Release, Quality Assurance, Agility, etc.

- a customer PM with mechanical background so no understanding of modern SW methods which constantly leads to a contentious context between the OEM and our SW team

- a Technical Director (my Line Manager) in place thanks to nepotism and consequently not ensuring his responsibilities (2 weeks off during CRITICAL RFQ phase, he used to frequently bypass me and go against my discussion with the client about establishing stronger processes, the list of incompetencies is too long...)

SW Project Lead and Firefighter in a matrix Tier-1 organization (LEM) in an environment still growing between chaotic and mature (not yet ASPICE Level 1 in all processes):

- the responsibility for coordinating all SW activities for each SW Release with the TPL, the System Engineer, the Head of SW, the SW Team and the V&V Manager

- very high pressure from both the customer and the internal senior management since I replaced a suddenly unavailable SWPL when we were about to deliver PPAP and SOP

- 2 years of Joint Reviews between Volvo and LEM were not done, therefore I had a HUGE work to catch up everything for the PPAP milestone

- the PM was totally disconnected from the reality of the SW domain, consequently there was a lot of support to bring to him to help him communicate properly with the customer

-  BTW, I received written congratulations from the Component Owner of Volvo Trucks for the PPAP milestone :)

Quality & Validation Testing Team Lead in a mature Tier-1 organization (achieving CMMI L2): follow the link

PMO Planner in RENESAS Electronics Europe in a very structured environment (CMMI L3, ISO9001, Ms Project Server, AUTOSAR)

RENAULT Powertrain SW Project Lead in a strong matrix OEM organization in a very structured context (CMMI L3, MBD):

- Initially in charge of 1 SW project for an Engine Management System ECU
- On the field learning of the Diesel and Gasoline Powertrain Motors (Combustion Cycle, Intake, Compression, Power, Exhaust, Cylinder, Pistons, injectors, etc.) directly used to properly design the application layer of the Powertrain Control SW by working with the different SW Function Leads to integrate the relevant version of each SW function into the Application SW (Model Based Design in Simulink)
- Management of a Team of 2 on-site engineers (Build/Configuration and Calibration Engineers)
- Interface with all required SW Function Leads to design the Application SW of 2 Diesel Engine Management Systems

- One of my main objectives was to design the Application SW so that the overall Powertrain complies with Euro 5 norm
- Monitoring of the ECU and Basic SW supplier (BOSCH).
- Interface with PMO for the monthly update of the SW Dashboard, KPIs and Risks & Issues.
- Clear and concise reporting to the Program Manager in Monthly Steering committee, always in line with Quality, Costs, Timing and Scope objectives.
- Mission unfortunately stopped due to serious physical health issue (recurrence of pneumothorax/lung collapse) requiring huge pleura surgery and long term recovery.

Supposed to take the lead of this SW project in 6 months, I have been very proactive and autonomous after 3 months only.
Therefore my Line Manager assigned a new Diesel Powertrain ECU project to me very shortly. He said I was the best external SW Lead he hired during his time at Renault.

Program Manager (& hierarchical manager) in a small "projectized" organization (where PMs are both responsible for resources & budgets) as opposed to matrix (strong/weak) and functional organizations (where Discipline Managers are both responsible for resources and budgets): see interesting article on this topic
Scope: Develop and Maintain 3 Automotive SW Products for an OEM (PSA/Stellantis): DIAMUX products which are used by PSA to upgrade, calibrate & configure all ECUs on their vehicles in all manufacturing sites (HUGE PRESSION)
- Management of 6 on-site PM, Architects/Engineers and 6 offshore Engineers based in Vietnam
- Project Estimates and Scheduling, Project Tracking (see extract of Program & Workload Plan below - no ALM available, so created a fully automated plan in excel)
- Creation of the first Project Dashboard (Top Risks/Issues, Progress, status)
- Customer facing in a contentious context (very aggressive customer PM => 3 different PMs in 1 year only on our side), problems solving, reporting to our Management
- Delivery of the Product releases (DIAMUX, OTTOMAN, ORUS DIAG + Evolutive & Corrective Maintenance Releases => 2-3 formal SW Product Releases per month)
- Change Management and bugs tracking (Mantis Bug Tracker)
- Improvement of the quality of the SW releases thanks to the hiring of a SW Requirement Engineer in charge of setting up a SW specification including tagged / labeled SW requirements with all required quality criteria (unique ID, atomic, verifiable, clear and non ambiguous, etc.) that are then traced to source code and test cases using state-of-the-art tool called Reqtify to manage all traceability and consistency metrics of our product development lifecycle
- Significant increase of the agility and productivity of the Project Team via the hiring of an Open Source technologies (SVN) and Configuration/Build/Release Expert (Time needed to build a full SW release decreased from 1/1.5 days to approx. 4 hours)
- Produced one of the key assets for our Technical and Financial offer (see below the entire workload plan including all team resources and all requirement, architecture, coding, testing, release tasks and covering all 3 SW tools/projects and evolutive and corrective maintenance WPs) that allowed the company to demonstrate our capability to achieve the program objectives and to be awarded on this DIAMUX program again (although there was a very contentious context between PSA (Stellantis) Project Manager and See4Sys SW Team)
- I've been rewarded with a brand-new smartphone offered by the company
See feedback from Luis below, the Open source expert and Release Manager I hired, and from the Senior Business Manager in charge of the client PSA/Stellantis, Frank Buridan

With this fully automated workload plan (having no ALM at this time, in such a small structure), we take into account all the available human resources for the DIAMUX program (in France and Vietnam), their leave and potential absences, all activities in the lifecycle of the 3 DIAMUX products, OTTOMAN, and ORUS DIAG along with the various Work Packages and the lots for evolutive and corrective maintenance, and the various/cross-functional assignments within the company. By assigning different loads to within 2 hours for different resources across the various products and lots, totals by resource and by country (France / Vietnam) are calculated automatically, and if the resources are underloaded or overloaded, the corresponding cells appear very visibly in green or red, which allows the Program Manager to smooth resources over time and make realistic estimates and plans to provide the best visibility to the client PSA and the internal Management.

This automated plan was a MAJOR ASSET (according to the Business Manager himself) during the presentation of our small Parisian site’s offer to PSA to obtain the new award for the DIAMUX program that saved the Paris offices which would have disappeared without this project, as Luis also indicated in his feedback.

LEM TECH France - SW PRODUCT LEAD on a Battery Sensor for Volvo Trucks

• As part of my usual Technical Project/Product Management SUPPORT and unexpected pure backup SW Product Lead responsibilities (“firefighter”, due to the sudden unavailability of the usual assigned SW Lead & the identification of accumulated shortfalls in terms of SW Project Management, OEM/Tier-1 SW lifecycle joint reviews and other missing tasks)

  • After the 1-to-1 meeting with the Snr Product Manager EU/US and the requirements from the VP Quality in the latest Weekly FuSa/QA/CS Meeting who both got me understand the urgent situation and both technical & business-CRITICAL challenges to achieve the objectives of the SW PPAP and SOP milestones on this project (meaning delivering the Release Candidates on time and with the expected level of quality/scope agreed with the customer and checked during the formal Delivery review meeting online sessions and the formal PPAP joint review with this OEM), my approach has been:

    • first to negotiate with the OEM Purchase/Quality Engineer and Component Owner a reduced package of required work products to release in the scope of the formal PPAP milestone, which was only 10 work products out of more than 20 PPAP expected items, mainly based on the rationale that the excluded items were not relevant anymore at this advanced stage of the project and that we should only focus on the most helpful deliverables to monitor the SW project properly until PPAP, SOP milestones and maintenance phases. This negotiation ended successfully and allowed us to avoid low-added value workload and save a lot of time for the SW staff urgently needed to implement/fix/test blocking and major change requests / bugs before PPAP and SOP (including major issues with the Algorithm SW Component developed in MBD with Simulink).

    • Then, to avoid as much as possible the “documentation for documentation” vicious circle which is totally counterproductive on all aspects in the short and mid/long term for the company, its projects, and staff motivation/wellness, I decided to do the opposite of what has been done for the first 2 joint reviews of the SW lifecycle (the 3rd one has been only 30% done, the 4th one not done at all); consequently, for the 5th joint review corresponding to SW PPAP milestone, we were in a very uncomfortable situation to catch up all work not done on due time: to compare to the overall product level lifecycle, it’s like you must deliver the C-samples without having previously produced and validated A & B-samples… On top of that, the deliverables released for the 1st and 2nd joint reviews were using Volvo Templates but filled with totally irrelevant or irrealistic information: the SW Development Plan, SW Quality Assurance Plan, SW Progress Report (and other work products using Volvo templates) were naïvely reflecting what the OEM wanted to see, instead of mapping to Volvo QDPR (Standard Development Process), which may be implemented in numerous different ways, what has really been done by LEM so far and what will be done until SOP and series life. As I said, I wanted to avoid filling 10 documents internally with the terrible "documentation for documentation” mindset which is totally useless and kills the motivation of the staff members, who then are disgusted by what they THINK process improvement is, which is not at all the correct outcome when ASPICE and Volvo QDPR process are properly planned and implemented in a smart way, like we’ve got CMMI being successfully deployed at VALEO in 2007 for the first time in the French Industry.

• first time the Volvo template of SW Submission Warrant and SW Delivery review form have been properly documented and signed by myself when delivering the release candidates for PPAP and SOP, providing LEM Tech France with 2 formal & tangible high level & detailed product release baselines, the Warrant linking all important SW, HW, legal, admin, project, product, responsibilities and relevant information together, and the Delivery Review form providing a quite complete report of the SW activities / progress in terms of work products maturity, requirement implementation & coverage rates, defect status, planned changes, the different levels of testing results, CPU/RAM/ROM consumption, Planning/Risks/Quality status like 2 different levels of snapshot captured for each key project milestone => it required a lot of coordination (and hands-on production of required PPAP items) of all SW domains/interfaces, from the defect synthesis with the TPL and complex interface with system engineering to the architectural design produced by the Group Head of SW, the Head of SW and the SW team in Bulgaria and the V&V Manager for all testing results => strong evidence of release baselines management to present in case of customer or external audits/assessments and internal Configuration Audits + formal written congratulations received from the Component Owner of the OEM/Volvo Trucks for the PPAP SW Release Candidate delivery review milestone in July 2023.

• Significantly changed the internal structure and content of Volvo SW Development Plan template (description of the real internal practices/tools/templates + Major SW project-specific information) and the SW Progress Report (export of Codebeamer ALM KPIs really used to plan/track the progress of the SW team in Bulgaria, all this done in collaboration with the Head of SW based in Sofia, instead of manual KPIs not used at all, and to be documented in a Word template).

• First time the very exhaustive Volvo template of SW PPAP checklist is used in LEM: a lot of checkpoints covering all processes from RFQ/tendering to industrialization, mass production, delivery, and maintenance. Collected all required information to document this key checklist to be presented during the SW PPAP milestone review, conditioning our success in this major milestone, on top of the SW Delivery review done 2 weeks ago (see 2 points above).

• First time a concrete and formal Risk Management process has been established including a Risk Management Plan documented in Confluence and covering all requirements from applicable standards (ASPICE Risk Mgt process, CMMI PP/PMC process area, ISO 26262 Part 2 and the latest version of the IATF 16949 which now insists on the need to manage all risks properly) and a formal Risk Tracker in Codebeamer ALM that implements Risk Mgmt Plan requirements.

I was rewarded throughout my 2 years as a freelance engineer at LEM TECH France right from the end of the first month when my workload increased from 60% to 100% (there were 2 freelancers hired at the same time, but the other one was not retained) and being responsible, in addition to quality assurance on the RCD project, for Functional Safety on the BDM project (in particular, "Confidence in the Use of SW Tools" and "Dependent Failure Analysis", 2 subjects required by ISO26262 and not yet addressed by LEM). My freelance contracts were extended 3 times through a recruitment agency with an increase in the hourly rate at each contract renewal, and then LEM hired me for 1 year as a tier #1 supplier and increased my hourly rate by 40%. Once again, the greatest reward remains the human adventure I had in this team as you can see from the 2 reviews that Raphaël and Massimiliano have provided. With Valeo and Ausy, LEM TECH France remains one of my best professional memories.

PMO Planner in RENESAS Electronics Europe in a very structured environment (CMMI L3, ISO9001, Ms Project Server, AUTOSAR):

-Scope: Estimating, Planning and tracking of AUTOSAR Verification projects
Duration: 12 months
Resources: 1 PMO Project Planner, 1 AUTOSAR Verification Manager, ~6 Verification Engineers (on-site & offshore)

- Established WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) and Estimation Forms with AUTOSAR Verification Manager (3 points estimates: Triangular & PERT distributions)
- Established Project Schedule in Microsoft Project Server and baselined these as required
- Regular Leveling of the Project Resources in Microsoft Project Server + use of project web app
- Tracked project progress with AUTOSAR Verification Manager in weekly meeting
- Closed Project (Closed Project schedule, identified Lessons Learned, organized project closure review)

See in the pictures below the estimation form, basis for the automatic generation of the MS Project Schedule, and the very good feedback from the Expert Planner (Joanne) and the AUTOSAR Verification Manager (Meena) regarding my PMO skills.

Rewards:

12 months contract extended 12 more months and proposal for permanent hiring

10% Increase of the rate at the contract extension

Full autonomy on the Audits of approx. 20 AUTOSAR, Industrial and Renesas development kits (HW/SW) projects per month

Full autonomy on the Functional Safety Audit on the AUTOSAR MCAL ASIL B raised as one of the main strengths by a recognized External ASPICE/ISO26262 Assessor & 2 QA Managers from our German customer HELLA.

Approval of my proposal for the Transformation project of the traceability and consistency of the  SW lifecycle items

Again, a very good welcoming from my colleagues, including a German one from Düsseldorf, and a great experience in London city!

Airbus A400M Military Aircraft - SAGEM Defense Navigation System Inertial Reference Project in AUSY France R&D Centre

Hired in the team of Project & Quality Lead under the supervision of the R&D Centre Director, I've been assigned to 3 main roles

• to set up the very first offshore supplier activities in AUSY in compliance with CMMI L3 Supplier Agreement Management process / DO178B DAL A / EN9100 requested by our Customer SAGEM Defense to externalize SW Unit & SW/SW Integration Testing activities to a LCC (India in this case) due to the huge workload/cost it represents in DAL A safety projects and the relative low added value it has on this kind of very large Safety critical product where an entire Military Aircraft Inertial Reference system needs to be developed;

• to deploy the complete A400M SAGEM Defense Software Process within the Inertial Reference (IR) project in AUSY and ensure the full compliance with CMMI Level 3 capability and maturity: this includes implementing all SW Plans, from SW Project Management, SW Quality Assurance to SW Engineering and SW Configuration & Change Management processes;

• to support and coach SW engineers in the development activities from the SW requirements analysis, SW Low Level Design, SW coding (manual C source code) and SW Unit Testing all done in compliance with A400M SAGEM Defense SW processes and CMMI Level 3. Auditing of the activities via automatic Low Level Requirements inspection integrated in DOORS traceability tool.

Fixed Price Offshore Management Activities from scratch:

Scope: Set up and implement offshore activities (Safety critical Software Testing) for A400M military aircraft Inertial Reference system project

• Established Statement Of Work (SoW)

• Analyzed Technical Proposal from Offshore vendor

• Supervised the documentation of the Project Development Plan from Offshore Project Leader

• Monitored Offshore team (Progress Tracking meeting twice a week) and on-site expert to review all testing activities

• Coordinated acceptance of offshore vendor deliverables

• Set up warranty phase requirements

• Closed project with offshore vendor

  See below few extracts of work products demonstrating some of the above activities + my final feedback to our offshore vendor

The Management of these offshore activities had immediatly been evaluated as part of the CMMI L3 appraisal and the Customer DO178B DAL A Audit performed by the A400M Program Quality Director from SAGEM Defense (that I indenpendently managed onsite) in July 2009: it fully complied with the Supplier Management Process as defined by CMMI Level 3 and we received excellent results from the DO178B Audit from our customer. We also successfully passed the EN9100 certification a few months later.

I've been rewarded through the hiring of 2 SWQA Engineers working full-time under my responsibility on this Airbus A400M project and on a DCNS (now NAVAL Group) project.

Fixed Price Offshore SW Testing Setup, Implementation, Tracking, Acceptance Coordination, Warranty Negotiation, and successful Assessment against CMMI L3, DO178B DAL A & EN9100 (all from scratch and independently)