Dan Smith
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Dan Smith

Dan Smith is the Product Manager for Advisor at Planview, Inc. Prior to that; he oversaw information security and application infrastructure at Enrich. Dan holds a graduate certificate in engineering management from the University of Cambridge, an MBA from Santa Clara University, and a BSE in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He believes a company runs on its collective stomach and, in his spare time, plots reasons to bring cake into the office.

Project Prioritization is Not Enough: Why No One Uses Optimization for R&D Portfolio Management, and Why You Should – Enrich Consulting

R&D-driven organizations face the constant challenge of deciding whether to continue funding existing projects and when to start new initiatives. The overwhelming majority of firms will use project prioritization to rank the opportunities as part of that exercise, with a small minority suspecting that optimization is better suited to the task of project selection. So...

A Case of Mistaken Priorities: Project Prioritization Gone Bad – Enrich Consulting

It’s no secret that projects in the earlier stages of the development lifecycle are evaluated and managed very differently than projects in the later stages. One major pharmaceutical company believed these differences to be so great, however, that they split their development organization in two. Over time, the structural gulf became a cultural gulf, leading...

In R&D Portoflio Management, Failure is an Option – Enrich Consulting

Innovation is inherently risky. By definition, you’re doing something that you haven’t done before so there are no guarantees it will work. The mindset in many organizations is to “minimize” risk as if it were a disease, but it isn’t that simple. The best companies face risk head-on and manage it both systematically and transparently....

To Fund or Not to Fund: Helping Executives Get to “No” – Enrich Consulting

Another striking—and often underappreciated—aspect of [Steve] Jobs’ success was his ability to say no. At a company like Apple, thousands of ideas bubble up each year for new products and services that it could launch. The hardest thing for its leader is to decide which ones merit attention. Mr Jobs had an uncanny knack of...

Tied Up in Knots: Wasted Effort in R&D Portfolio Management – Enrich Consulting

“We can’t talk about the portfolio until you explain why Varmenase revenue is 5% less than last year’s forecast!” In almost every large organization a huge percentage of the effort in the “portfolio” process is spent “tying out” the new project valuations with the old ones. Teams ardently create reports to explain why the net present...