What This Is
An agenda for holding a Preliminary Design Review during a project, with detailed instructions for preparation before and running the meeting, and follow-up.
A Preliminary Design Review (PDR) is a review that happens in the Investigation/Planning phase of a project. A Project Vision or Project Charter has been created and the team is investigating how to meet the Vision requirements through technical or other components that will be designed and implemented during the project. The team must do this investigation to understand how to best meet the project goals for costs, schedule, and feature scope. PDR meetings happen during this phase to allow team members to present the high-level designs they are considering for achieving the project requirements, and the impact of those designs on the project’s cost, schedule, and scope of the project.
Why It’s Useful
It is important to allow the cross-functional team to see what each design team member is considering for their element of the system, product, application, or service being created:
- Other team members can have valuable objective input as to whether a particular design will work and whether it will truly meet requirements.
- Since other team members are designing elements that must work together as the final project deliverable, they must have insight into other components being designed.
- Finally, the entire team must make decisions about how to proceed on the overall project, to meet cost, schedule, and scope goals that are sometimes conflicting. Holding PDR meetings gives the team visibility across all elements of the project early on to aid those decisions.
How to Use It
Use the detailed steps and basic agenda on the following pages for planning and executing your PDR.
- Determine the overall purpose of having a Preliminary Design Review at this point in the project. Which high-level early designs needed to be reviewed for their impact on project scope, schedule, costs, and risk?
- Determine what pre-cursor deeper reviews may be required. Do any very deep technical reviews of those designs need to be held prior to a team-wide PDR?
- Determine who to invite, publish the agenda, and prepare materials, room, and equipment for the meeting.
Hold the meeting, capturing action items, decisions, and open issues. Document particularly key decisions made on project scope, schedule, or costs. Update your related Project Vision, Charter, or Scope document for those decisions.
Steps for Planning and Executing a PDR
Prior to the meeting, consider and handle the following aspects:
- Scope/subjects of PDR: Determine with the team which subsystems or project components should be reviewed in the next PDR. The goal is to hold a PDR on a subsystem as soon as enough is known about various design alternatives for that subsystem to
- Judge whether an alternative is too risky/ costly/ etc. and whether it will meet requirements;
- Make tradeoff decisions that will eliminate one or more alternatives;
- Inform other team members of progress on the design that will affect their work.
- Detailed technical reviews needed before PDR: Decide whether to hold a separate deeply technical review on any subsystem prior to the full-team PDR. The overall PDR is meant to not only consider whether the design will work, but consider its implication on overall project goals. Some teams choose to have a separate small meeting that is a highly technical review of every detail of the preliminary subsystem design, then bring a design overview and summary of issues to the PDR for the broader cross-functional team.
- Invitations: Invite all core cross-functional team members.
- Agenda: Publish a full agenda 1 week ahead of the meeting and make sure each person presenting a design understands what they should create and present.
- Background materials: Have materials on each subsystem, and other documents such as the overall budget, be published at least 2 days ahead of time to allow off-line review
- Food: Consider arranging for snacks or lunch to be brought in during the review.
- Equipment: Identify all equipment needed.
- Meeting role - Recorder: Decide whether you’ll have someone be “recorder” to capture action items, etc. If so, appoint that person and discuss the role.
- Meeting role - Facilitator: Decide whether you’ll have a facilitator. If so, appoint that person and discuss their role. This is highly recommended. The project leader often needs to participate in discussions, and it’s hard to do that AND keep the meeting on track at the same time.
The day of the meeting, do the following:
- Prepare the room for the meeting: Hang blank flip chart paper on the walls for recording action items and issues. Write the agenda, with time slots, on one of the papers to keep it visible during the meeting. Include timeslots for breaks at least once every 1.5 hours.
- Set up equipment: (LCD projectors, PCs, overhead projectors, etc.).
- Introduce the meeting: Review objectives for this PDR and the agenda, check time periods with the team. Set ground rules, such as encouraging any team member to say “process check” if they think the meeting has gotten off-target.
- Hold the meeting: If any agenda item starts to require more than it’s time slot allows, pause the meeting and discuss with the team whether this item should be completed by assigning actions to happen after the meeting, or whether the agenda should be adjusted to allow more time for it to continue.
- Close out the meeting: At the end of the meeting, review all action items and make sure they have assigned owners and due dates.
Template: PDR Meeting Agenda for [Date]
Start: [Date] [Time]
Objective: [overall objective for this PDR]. E.g., “Review subsystems x, y and z to compare feasible design alternatives, understand whether we are currently on target for meeting our cost and schedule goals, and make design decisions accordingly.”
General Materials required: (distribute materials beforehand as much as possible):
- Project Vision document
- Action Item list
- Open Issues list
- Key Decisions list
- Phase 1 Deliverables list
- Project Overview Test Plan (high level test plan for entire project)
- Draft schedule timeline
- Budget, including tools and equipment list
Meeting Agenda Items:
ITEM 1) Individual Subsystems Reviews: (30 min to 1.5 hour per subsystem)
Objectives of design discussions: [fill in here specific objectives for reviewing this design]
Cover for each design alternative:
- Will the technical design work? Does the team see any flaws in the technical design?
- Does it meet applicable feature and performance requirements in the Project Vision?
- Is it manufacturable? Serviceable? Appropriate usability for the customer?
- What are schedule, resource, budget, risk, and product cost implications of any design alternatives being considered?
a) Subsystem [Name] - [Presenter]
Materials to be provided:
- Visuals of conceptual ideas
- Technical data on weight, size, performance - i.e., appropriate key specs for this subsystem
- Tradeoff table on design alternatives the designer is considering (see Project Alternatives Tradeoff Table template)
- Plan for early testing of technical innovations (how will the designer prove viability of the design alternatives as soon as possible?)
b) Subsystem [Name] - [Presenter]
Repeat above for as many subsystems as will be covered in this PDR
ITEM 2) Review project budget (30 min to 1 hour)
- Review current estimates for project budget, best and worst case based on design alternatives being considered, and their implications for full project staffing, materials requirements, training and travel, etc.
ITEM 3) Estimated product cost review (30 min to 1 hour)
- Review current estimates for product cost, based on design alternatives being proposed.
ITEM 4) Project schedule Review (30 min to 1 hour)
- Review current estimate of timeline for entire project, based on designs being reviewed.
- Review timeline for finishing the investigation and planning phase - are we on target?
ITEM 5) Overall Project Goals Review ( 1 hour)
- Based on preliminary designs presented and alternatives being investigated, discuss overall ramifications for meeting project goals, and specific tradeoffs that should be considered.
ITEM 6) Wrap up (30 min)
- Review Key Decisions captured, and ensure all team members understand and agree with how they’ve been recorded.
- Review Action Items recorded during this meeting. Ensure all have assigned names and due dates, and are fully understood.
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